There are good reasons why Spa has become a favourite of recent generations of grand prix drivers

The majestic circuit of Spa-Francorchamps looked much the same at the weekend as it did the last time I visited it in 1967 – the year of Sgt Pepper and the assassination of Che Guevara. But that’s one thing about great race tracks. You can spend 43 years smoothing out the trickier corners, replacing earth banks with run-off areas, moving the pits and the start-finish line from one bit of straight road to another and erecting new grandstands here and there, yet the essential character of the place – its integrity, you might say, as well as its ambiance – will usually survive.

Generally speaking, this is because the older circuits followed two patterns: that of the public roads on which the earliest motor races were held, and that of the land itself. Spa is a particularly good example, since a track laid out on what were originally public roads also follows the hills and valleys sculpted over millennia by wind, water and geology among the pine forests of the Ardennes.

It is no accident that Spa has become a favourite of recent generations of grand prix drivers. As grateful as they may be for the safety precautions introduced over the past half-century, they still relish the challenge offered by corners that do not conform to the regular geometry usually produced when a circuit architect fires up his computer, and they are not entirely impervious to a sense of history.

The longest track currently used in Formula One, at 7km, it was twice as long back in 1967. The old Masta Straight and its legendary kink may have disappeared in the intervening years but surviving features such as Eau Rouge and the hairpin at La Source retain a shape that was originally dictated by custom and nature.

A week before the race in Belgium, and about 150 miles south-east of Spa, I stopped on a straight piece of road cutting through agricultural land outside the city of Rheims, where long-disused whitewashed pits and grandstands still mark the location of the circuit that hosted important races between 1926 and 1966, including the French grand prix on 14 occasions. It was not hard to imagine the crowd in the tribunes rising to their feet as Mike Hawthorn’s Ferrari and Juan Manuel Fangio’s Maserati roared neck and neck towards the finish line in 1953, the bow-tied Englishman becoming the first British winner of a round of the world championship. If the long-silent Rheims circuit is a well-known place of pilgrimage, the fine memorial at the junction of the D937 and the D1029, on an otherwise featureless plateau south of the town of Péronne, came as a complete surprise. It commemorates the deaths in June 1933, during the Picardy grand prix meeting, of a pair of Bugatti drivers.

The first, Louis-Aimé Trintignant, one of five sons of a Vaucluse vineyard owner, died during practice after losing control at high speed when a gendarme wandered into the road. The second fatality came the following day, during the race itself, when Guy Bouriat, a French count and a talented driver, was attempting to retake the lead from Philippe Etancelin. As the two of them came up to lap a slower car, its driver spotted Etancelin’s Alfa Romeo and let him through but then moved back on to his original line and collided with Bouriat, whose car left the road and burst into flames.

Trintignant was 30 years old, Bouriat 31. The last race at Péronne was held in 1939, and the memorial, once pockmarked with the evidence of fighting in the second world war, has been carefully restored. No other trace of the triangular circuit, which passed through the villages of Brie and Mesnil-Bruntel, remains.

Standing in these places, listening to the echoes of heroism and tragedy, it made me laugh to think that Hermann Tilke, Bernie Ecclestone’s pet circuit designer, has apparently been asked to incorporate the outlines of famous corners from historic tracks into a new Formula One facility in Austin, Texas. Just what the world needs: the first karaoke grand prix.

Church Cup final is perfect antidote to spot-fixing

Even lifelong cynics are experiencing a sense of profound disillusionment following the allegations of spot-fixing in the Lord’s Test. My own preferred antidote is to attend Thursday’s 60th Church Times Cup final, the climax of a competition between cricketing clergymen representing the various geographical subdivisions of the Church of England. The match takes place, as it always has, at the attractive Southgate ground in north London, and this final pits Litchfield against Bath & Wells, neither of whom has appeared in any of the previous 59 finals. It is almost certain that any no-balls will be the consequence of excessive exertion rather than skulduggery.

Time for Button to take races by scruff of the neck

Over the past few years it has been customary to compare Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton in terms of Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna, the smooth approach shared by Prost and Button contrasting with Senna and Hamilton. The comparison has been even more tempting this season, in which they are both driving McLarens, as Senna and Prost did 20 years ago. But on Sunday Hamilton turned that comparison on its head. Once he had taken advantage of Mark Webber’s poor start, he drove with an air of calmness that Prost would have recognised. Now all we want to see is Button performing a similar volte-face, taking a race by the scruff of its neck, and reminding us of the great Brazilian.

Wenger slipped up when he sold Diarra to Real Madrid

Lassana Diarra was the outstanding performer in Real Madrid’s weekend draw with Mallorca, the Frenchman moving easily from midfield to full-back when José Mourinho brought on Sami Khedira for the last 20 minutes. Diarra now rivals Javier Mascherano for the title of the world’s most effective holding midfielder, and how Arsène Wenger should be regretting the decision to let his compatriot leave the Emirates two years ago.

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The Spanish driver has never been happier and still believes he can win the Formula One world championship this season

This is a good time to be a Spanish sporting hero, a thought that brings a sudden smile to the face of Fernando Alonso as he sits in the Ferrari motorhome in the rainswept paddock at Spa. His compatriots Rafael Nadal, Alberto Contador, Pau Gasol of the LA Lakers, the MotoGP champion-elect Jorge Lorenzo and this summer’s World Cup winners – including his old friend Xabi Alonso – enjoy global renown. And he, twice Formula One’s world champion, is approaching the climax of his first season as the leader of the sport’s most charismatic team.

“You have to believe in yourself,” he says, “and 15 years ago it was difficult to believe that Spain was a good country for sport. Now everybody believes that we can do what other countries are doing. That self-confidence is very important.

“Spain as a country has developed very quickly. In terms of facilities we are now very well prepared. If you go to any little town in the middle of nowhere, you always have a tennis court, a basketball court, a building to do other sports in. That helped the current generation. We need to enjoy it, because a period like this may be difficult to repeat in the future.”

Alonso certainly gives the impression of relishing the latest phase of his 10-year career as a grand prix driver. Although his first season with the Italian team has been filled with incident and controversy, in cultural terms he appears to have found his spiritual home. But is he, for all the obvious pleasure of working in a Latin environment, nevertheless disappointed to find himself lying only fifth in the championship standings, behind Mark Webber, Lewis Hamilton, Sebastian Vettel and Jenson Button, and the target of fierce criticism for the victory reluctantly handed to him by his team-mate, Felipe Massa, in Germany five weeks ago?

“No, the opposite,” he says. “I’m very, very happy. My life now is the best I could imagine, ever. I’m driving for the best team in the world, and the integration with the team is very good. I fell in love with Italy and the tifosi, and I feel their support.”

He is spending more time in Maranello, he says, than he ever did at the headquarters of his previous teams – “Sometimes working, sometimes not working.” When there is nothing much to do at the home in Lugano which he shares with his wife, the singer Raquel del Rosario, he goes to stay with a friend near the Ferrari factory, or installs himself in Enzo Ferrari’s old apartment at the Fiorano test track, and explores the hills of Emilia-Romagna on his racing bike.

In his last two seasons with Renault, he says, he was going to a race merely with the ambition of making it into the third qualifying session as one of the 10 fastest cars. “That was the motivation. So if I think of my position one year ago, life has changed from black to white. I cannot ask more. For sure, winning the championship here will be the top, the last thing to complete a perfect moment of my life.”

Nor has he given up hope of overhauling the drivers lying ahead of him in this season’s table, given the new scoring system, which awards 25 points for a win. He has 141 points to Webber’s 161, thanks to his results in the last two races: the contentious victory at Hockenheim and a second place in Budapest.

“I think it’s possible,” he says. “There are only 20 points to the leader now. That’s less than one race. With seven races to go, there are plenty of possibilities. We need to be very consistent, to be on the podium in every race if we can, and for sure to win at least two of the seven. The car’s performance has improved a lot in the last couple of races and if we carry on in this way it will be possible. If we can’t, it will be difficult. So it will be necessary to win the race in the factory, as well as on the circuit.

“But whatever happens, I know that with Ferrari I’ll have this possibility for many years because this team is always in a position to win. That makes me very confident and very relaxed about my future.”

Nevertheless, the season’s incidents have come thick and fast. Victory in the opening race in Bahrain, making him the sixth driver to win on his debut for the Scuderia, came after Vettel suffered an engine problem. In Melbourne, following a first-lap spin, there was a thrilling drive from last place to fourth. In China he jumped the start – “Driver error,” he says with a rueful grin – and, after a penalty dropped him to 15th, again chased through the field to fourth.

His Monaco weekend was ruined when he lost control at the top of the climb to Casino Square and smashed into the barrier during a practice session. There was a look of barely suppressed self-disgust on his face as he lifted himself out of the car, knowing that he would have to set off from the pit lane on another adrenalin-fuelled drive to sixth place.

“Driver error again there,” he says, before putting it in perspective. “I’m sure that for all championship contenders there are two or three races a year you would like to change because you did something wrong. In our case, because there are high expectations, there are many more comments. When I’m in front or I’m half a second quicker than my team-mate, that is seen as normal. When we do something wrong, it will be everywhere. We have to deal with that pressure.”

It redoubled at Hockenheim when Massa moved aside to let him take the lead in what was widely seen as an example of the team orders outlawed eight years ago after Rubens Barrichello let Michael Schumacher through to win in Austria. This time an immediate fine of 0,000 was imposed on Ferrari and on 8 September the affair will be considered by a meeting of the FIA World Motor Sports Council in Paris, with further punishment a possibility.

The imminence of the hearing makes Alonso reluctant to discuss the affair in detail, although he did dismiss trenchant criticisms of Ferrari’s conduct from Niki Lauda, a double world champion with the team in the 70s. “What Lauda said isn’t worth bothering about,” he said.

He and the team were clearly shocked by the vehemence of the reaction – particularly from the British media, which turned against him during his disputes with Lewis Hamilton during their turbulent season together at McLaren in 2007 – but his response now is bland. “Being in the best team in the world, you have to expect that everything we do will be 100 times bigger than what it is, whether we do well or make a mistake,” he says. “We have to concentrate on the race this weekend. Then we’ll see what happens in Paris.”

For public consumption, at least, he rejects the idea that a team with championship ambitions needs to concentrate its efforts behind one designated lead driver. “I think now everything has to be 50-50,” he says. “The cars are exactly the same and the drivers are all super-talented, so I think having a first driver and a second driver isn’t working any more. There have to be equal possibilities for both. But for sure when there are only a few races to go in the championship, then it’s time to think what is best for the team.” In that last sentence may lie the key to an affair which is likely to take further twists.

Meanwhile he was fastest in wet and dry conditions in both yesterday’s practice sessions for tomorrow’s Belgian grand prix, at a circuit where he won twice in the old F3000 but has managed no better than second and third places in the senior formula. For Ferrari, by contrast, there have been no fewer than 16 wins since the first for Alberto Ascari in 1952, including a hat-trick in the last three years: another example of the pressure loaded on to any driver, however illustrious, who aspires to leadership of the Scuderia, and in this instance one who had to read Bernie Ecclestone’s remark this week that Alonso will never match Michael Schumacher’s achievements with the team.

“We all enjoy driving at Spa,” Alonso says. “The length of the circuit makes it very interesting. Seven kilometres give you plenty of time to feel the car and there are the type of corners that in qualifying, if you take a risk or if you push hard, you can make up a lot of time. The circuit has some gradients, up and down, and the kind of compression that you feel in your body at Eau Rouge is something that you only experience here. When you stop the car you say, ‘Wow, this was good fun.’ “

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• Rossi wanted to start a fresh chapter in MotoGP career
• Italian felt his work at Yamaha was finished

Valentino Rossi said it was the motivation to start a fresh chapter in his MotoGP career that led him to quit Yamaha and switch to Ducati for next season.

The 31-year-old six times world Motogp champion has signed a two-year deal with the Italian manufacturer after he felt his work with Yamaha was over. The decision of Yamaha’s Motogp cheif Masao Furusawa to retire at the end of this season also prompted him to seek a change of teams.

“In general I have two or three important things,” said Rossi. “First, at the end of this season, Masao Furusawa retires, and stops work. So for me, it was important. These seven years Furusawa was always the No1 of Yamaha. So without him, I don’t know what will happen. So for this I was quite worried.

“I have the feeling that my work here in Yamaha is finished,” he added. “So the situation changed a lot. We did a great job, fantastic, great emotion, but we modified the situation from 2004 in [a] positive [way], because now the bike is fantastic. Maybe it is the best one, and Yamaha have great riders, especially [Jorge] Lorenzo but also [Ben] Spies is fast.

“So it looks like for me here, the time is finished, you know? So I need a new adventure, some new experience, but especially a new motivation. So, I decided for Ducati.”

“At the beginning of the season I spoke to Ducati. I felt Ducati is a lot more different than in the past, a lot more open to fix all the important things of the contract together. So from that moment I start to think.”

“I heard somewhere that it is a money choice, but I want to say that this is not true, because the money I will take from Ducati is exactly the same money as Yamaha offered,” he said. “So there is no difference, zero difference. It means also PR days and days of work outside the grand prix and work into the weekend, all these things.

“So, I think that, I always speak with [Ducati general manager] Filippo Preziosi, and I see in him the similar behaviour that I saw in Furusawa in 2004.

“He wants me and he trusts in me and he thinks that together we can improve the Ducati, so I’m curious. I think this year the bike become a little bit easier to ride, but I think we can modify the bike like we want.”

The Italian wants Yamaha to release him in time to take part in the post-season Valencia test. “I expect that Yamaha will let me try the Ducati in Valencia, because our story is a different story [from Honda, which refused to allow him to test for Yamaha in similar circumstances], and I give more to Yamaha from 2004 to now, I improve a lot the bike and all the team, so if they are fair, they have to say yes for my test in Valencia.”

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Harry Tincknell, son of Connaught’s former executive chairman, benefited from series of sponsorship deals

At least five major suppliers to Connaught, the beleaguered social housing maintenance group, have helped bankroll the promising motor racing career of Harry Tincknell, son of the company’s recently departed executive chairman, through a series of sponsorship deals.

Prominent among Tincknell’s sponsorship partners are Plumbing Trade Services, known as PTS, which is part of stock market listed BSS Group. Also placing their brand name on the young driver’s shirts are building merchant Jewson, equipment rental firm Speedy Hire and IT firms Azzurri and Annodata.

All five businesses have significant ties with troubled Connaught, the business Harry’s father, Mark Tincknell, spent 28 years building from a small regional operator in Exeter into one of Britain’s largest social housing maintenance groups.

However a shock profits warning in late June led to panic among a range of Connaught’s stakeholders, including investors, suppliers and lenders. The company’s share price has dropped 95% amid concerns about the group’s aggressive accounting policies. Connaught last month announced Tincknell and finance director Stephen Hill were leaving; the departure of chief executive Mark Davies had been announced in January.

Between them, the three executives each made multimillion-pound fortunes from the sale of stakes in the FTSE 250 company before the share price collapsed. Between April 2008 and last October, Tincknell, Davies and Hill took home windfalls of £10.7m, £5.5m and £2m respectively. Tincknell this year reinvested £1.6m, which has shrunk in value.

The former Connaught boss is believed to have used his contacts book as well as mortgaging a home he owns with his wife to help secure sponsorship deals to further his son’s racing career.

Harry Tincknell, who turns 19 next month and lives with his parents, is a promising driver and claimed his second Formula Renault UK Championship victory last weekend at Snetterton racetrack in Norfolk.

Several suppliers to Connaught contacted by the Guardian would not speak on the record but all privately insisted decisions to sponsor Harry Tincknell had been taken for commercial reasons. Some pointed out they offered similar sponsorship deals throughout motor sport.

Nicola Lidgett, head of marketing for Azzurri Communications, said: “For me it is absolutely a valuable exercise.” The business struck a deal to outsource Connaught’s entire fixed and mobile communications in October 2008.

In 2007, Connaught negotiated a deal to use Jewson as preferred supplier while Speedy Hire announced in March this year that it had entered into a new five-year strategic supply agreement with Connaught. Meanwhile, Annodata has outsourced Connaught’s printer services operations.

A month after issuing its first profits warning in June – at which point the company had assured investors it had substantial headroom in its bank borrowing facilities – Connaught released a further trading update informing investors the business now had “an urgent requirement for additional funds to meet the current and ongoing needs of the business”.

It said the working capital crisis had been largely triggered by suppliers and subcontractors – many of them previously eager to secure business with fast-growing Connaught – tightening the payment terms demanded of the crisis-stricken group. The business remains in crisis talks with lenders, who may end up being forced to take ownership of a portion of the business. A further profits warning last week made clear Connaught expected to make a “material” operating loss for its current financial year.

On the same day, Connaught’s largest and most loyal shareholder, Breeden European, run by former US securities and exchange commission chairman Richard Breeden, sold more than half his investment, as did a second major shareholder, Norwegian government pension fund Norges Bank.

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• Red Bull’s new front wing has come under scrutiny
• ‘You should never penalise things that are ingenious’

Mark Webber has told his rivals to stop trying to find fault with Red Bull and concentrate on resolving their own issues.

Red Bull’s latest front wing design concept has come under considerable scrutiny due to its flexibility at high speed, when it is supposed to remain static. Ferrari have also developed their own version and both have passed FIA tests, but although no team has lodged a formal protest there have been plenty of complaints.

The FIA tests will be improved ahead of the Belgian grand prix after the Mercedes team principal Ross Brawn claimed they are “not correct”. But after Red Bull’s innovative exhaust blown diffuser was also frowned upon before rivals caught up last season, championship leader Webber feels the criticism is all a lot of hot air.

“Our guys have broken their balls to design a car in the spirit of the regulations, and every time we are tested by the FIA, we pass,” said Webber. “The car has always been passed by the FIA, so when people don’t like what they see on the stopwatch, they have to justify their own positions sometimes. When there’s pressure on people to perform and they’re getting destroyed, that’s how it is.

“Some teams have done certain things, other teams have done other things. McLaren incorporated the F-duct, which is a sensational idea. We’ve turned the world upside down to try and do that which is not without resource difficulties, but that’s Formula One.

“We’re more than happy with what we have on the car, and we’re sleeping well at night. You should never penalise things that are ingenious, and people who are doing a good job, and that’s sometimes the case. There’s always something new to bring out of the cupboard.”

Webber feels if the critics want to harp on about parity, then Red Bull should be allowed to equalise their engines in line with other teams. At present the Renault powerplant is down on horsepower compared to the likes of Mercedes, as used by the German manufacturer, McLaren and Force India.

“We’ve been looking for engine parity for the last few years because we know we don’t have the most powerful engine,” he said. “When we go to a track where there are not many straights, the car is good because we’ve had to try incredibly hard to get the car performing on those circuits.

“Other teams sometimes want everything, but we need parity on the engine and then it would be a fair game. That’s all we want, similar horsepower to other teams. It’s not a one-way street with this stuff you know.”

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• German’s Red Bull team-mate Mark Webber to start second
• McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button 5th and 11th

Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel has claimed pole position for the Hungarian grand prix tomorrow after today’s qualifying. His team-mate will start second, which means Red Bull have their sixth all-front row of this year’s championship.

Vettel claimed his seventh pole of the season and fourth in a row with a crushing lap at the Hungaroring of 1min18.773sec, just over four tenths of a second quicker than Webber.

It is Red Bull’s 11th pole in the 12 races this season, but this was by far their most impressive, with third-on-the-grid Fernando Alonso in his Ferrari a staggering 1.2sec adrift.

Alonso will start the race third, while the McLaren pair of Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button will start in fifth and 11th place respectively.

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• Vettel claims Red Bull’s 10th pole of the yearby 0.002sec
• Alonso pleased despite missing chance to take pole

Sebastian Vettel claimed Red Bull’s 10th pole position of the year following an electrifying battle with Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso.

The Spaniard, quickest in the first two qualifying sessions, seemed poised to take Ferrari’s first pole for 28 races, stretching back to the 2008 Brazilian grand prix. But Vettel snatched top spot from Alonso by just two thousandths of a second on his final flying lap to spark joyous celebrations among the home fans at Hockenheim. Vettel will almost certainly claim this to be the best pole of his six this season and 11 of his career.

“It would be interesting to see just how much it is, two thousandths of a second,” said Vettel. “It was very close all session. Fernando was really strong, and the Ferraris were very competitive.

“We knew it would be a difficult session, and two thousandths of a second is not what you are looking for, so we had to push very hard and it was very exciting. I’m extremely happy because it’s my first time on pole at home, but the challenge will come tomorrow when it will be a tough fight against the red cars.”

Alonso said: “We have to be happy because we are on the front row of the grid for the first time this season. Finally we have had a perfect Saturday, and although we lost pole by a very small margin, this is not important. The points are won tomorrow, so we also have to have a good Sunday.”

With none of the rain that blighted practice yesterday, as well as the start of this morning’s final session, Ferrari proved they have put recent problems behind them and Felipe Massa will start third on the grid. Mark Webber, winner last time out at Silverstone, is fourth, followed by McLaren’s Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton – the former outpacing the latter for the first time in seven races.

Renault’s Robert Kubica is seventh, followed by Rubens Barrichello in eighth and his Williams team-mate Nico Hulkenberg in 10th. Between them in ninth is Mercedes’s Nico Rosberg.

For the third time in four qualifying sessions, Michael Schumacher failed to make it out of Q2, with fellow German Hulkenberg proving to be his undoing on this occasion. Towards the end of the 15 minutes Schumacher had crept into 10th position, only for Hulkenberg to knock the seven-times champion down to 11th with his final lap.

Sauber’s Kamui Kobayashi and Renault’s Vitaly Petrov will line up 12th and 13th. Adrian Sutil qualified 14th in his Force India but incurs a five-place grid penalty for needing a new gearbox and will therefore start 19th.

Pedro de la Rosa in his Sauber will start 14th, followed by the Toro Rosso pairing of Jaime Alguersuari and Sebastien Buemi.

It proved to be a wretched qualifying session for Force India as the initial 20-minute run was red flagged after five minutes due to Vitantonio Liuzzi hitting a wall along the start-finish straight. Liuzzi made a mistake by running wide on the still wet astroturf on the outside of the final corner, known as the Sudkurve.

That sent the Italian careering across the track where he ended up ploughing into the concrete pit wall, immediately losing his front wing and a tyre that was narrowly avoided by a passing Ferrari. With fibreglass from the chassis scattered across the circuit, it took the marshals eight minutes to clear away the debris and the pit lane to re-open again.

Liuzzi will start 22nd, with only Hispania Racing’s Sakon Yamamoto and Lucas di Grassi for Virgin Racing behind him, the latter unable to set a time due to a technical problem. The four drivers ahead of Liuzzi who all failed to make it out of Q1 were the Lotus duo of Jarno Trulli and Heikki Kovalainen, along with Timo Glock and Bruno Senna for Virgin and Hispania Racing.

Due to Sutil’s penalty, Trulli and Kovalainen will move up to 17th and 18th on the grid, with Glock and Senna 20th and 21st.

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• Japanese driver Yamamoto partner Bruno Senna for Hispania
• ‘Karun Chandhok is still part of the Hispania Racing’

The Indian Formula One driver Karun Chandhok has been dropped for next week’s German grand prix, his Hispania team said today.

“After Sakon Yamamoto gave a very positive performance in Silverstone, the team has decided to give the Japanese driver another opportunity to drive the car alongside Bruno Senna,” they said in a statement.

“Karun Chandhok is still part of the Hispania Racing, HRT F1 Team family and is likely to be in the car at some later races this season.”

The 26-year-old Chandhok began his career in Formula One this season following three years in GP2. He started 10 races for Hispania, finishing in 14th place in Bahrain and Montreal.

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• Silverstone practice has not gone well so far, say drivers
• Red Bulls of Webber and Vettel are faster in the heat

The message from the world champion Jenson Button today was: “It’s not all over yet.” But today was a desperately disappointing day for McLaren after their substantial upgrades failed to make any difference on the track.

In the slower, morning practice session, Lewis Hamilton managed second place behind Sebastian Vettel, with Button eighth. But when the heat turned up in the afternoon – the track temperature was 43 degrees throughout the second practice – so did the pace and the McLaren pair were well off it. Hamilton finished in eighth place and Button was 13th, two seconds behind fastest man Mark Webber in his Red Bull.

Practice sessions are not a reliable guide to how the race will go because so many teams experiment with different settings and fuel loads, but the McLaren team admitted that they struggled to come to terms with the upgrades which were expected to make their cars quicker than they had been in Valencia two weeks ago.

“It’s been a difficult day for us. We had a new package but we have a lot of work to do,” the team principal Martin Whitmarsh said after the second session. “We got a lot of information today but we’ve got to use that information to make the car faster tomorrow. Everybody is pushing hard and hopefully we will get it right tomorrow.”

Button, who is seeking his first podium position in a British grand prix, said: “Today’s been trickier than expected. It improved towards the end but we’re still not where we’d like to be. We haven’t got the balance right yet which is disappointing as so many people took days off today to see us. It was amazing to see all the caps – at first I thought they belonged to other teams.”

As well as the McLaren team the British crowd were cheering the fact that they were at Silverstone at all. A year ago race weekend here was billed as the last with the race due to switch to Donington, but the grand prix is now assured for 17 years and, as a result, drivers got their first drive on the remodelled circuit.

Button, aiming to be the sixth British winner of his home grand prix in the past 20 years, added: “On high fuel the car seems to work pretty well. On low fuel it’s trickier. It’s pretty bumpy here. It’s not terrible but the Red Bulls look very fast.

“The good thing is we’re quite close to home. We’ll all be working late into the night tonight – we’ve got so much information from today. We did so many different set-up changes – and we’ll see tomorrow where we are. Hopefully we can get it right because it’s a special weekend for the team. Last year, in Turkey, I really struggled on the Friday and won the race by 30 seconds so it’s not over yet. It hasn’t been perfect, that’s the truth. I wish it had been a bit easier for us but it hasn’t been.”

Hamilton sounded more philosophical. “It’s not really disappointing,” he said. “I was well excited this morning. The feeling in the car was positive first thing but the changes we made didn’t make it better and that happens sometimes. It’s not something you can just bolt on. We will improve it tonight. It was bumpy – probably a bit more bumpy with our car unfortunately – and the new section is still picking up grip. Through a couple of hairpins it is pretty slippery.

“I definitely feel we’ve made a step forward from Valencia. This is a track a bit like Barcelona where we saw a second gap to the Red Bulls. I don’t think we’ll be seeing that sort of gap tomorrow. I think it will be a lot closer.”

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• Fernando Alonso is second fastest for Ferrari
• Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button both off the pace

Mark Webber dominated the second practice session of the British grand prix here, with the Australian posting the fastest time of the day ahead of Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso and his Red Bull team-mate, Sebastian Vettel.

On a day when Lewis Hamilton and Jensen Button both struggled in their McLarens, Webber, who is 24 points behind championship leader Hamilton, placed the memory of his crash in last month’s Valencia grand prix behind him. With Vettel in third there appears a real prospect of Red Bull repeating last year’s 1-2 finish here.

Webber, who clocked a time of 1min 31.234sec around the new-look Silverstone circuit, said: “It was a pretty good day apart from the electrical problem at the end, which was a shame – we lost a few laps.” The 33-year-old lost around 15 minutes of the session due to the malfunction but Webber has confidence in his Red Bull ahead of qualifying.

“The car seems to be going pretty well here. I think a few of the other teams were sandbagging a bit [purposefully going slow], but we’re happy with our programme and looking forward to qualifying. The new section of the track is pretty difficult, but it’s a good challenge.”

Vettel, who like Webber benefited from a switch to softer tyres, is ahead of his team-mate in third in the championship with 115 points, 12 behind Hamilton. He said: “The sessions were OK today – in the afternoon we had a bit of a spin and flat-spotted a set of hard tyres. We also had a problem with the brake pedal but nothing big. The pace of the car was good.

“The new section of the track is quite low speed, but it’s not as slow as we expected and doesn’t kill the rhythm. It adds something new and makes it more of a challenge. The track here is magnificent, it’s good fun, so I’m looking forward to tomorrow.”

Alonso, meanwhile, was content but insistent that Ferrari had to improve. “It’s been a pretty good Friday but we know we have to improve the car,” he said. “The Red Bulls are a lot quicker than us at the moment, so we’ll try to get as close as possible tomorrow to have a good Saturday.”

The Spaniard also feels there is more to come from the McLarens. “It will be very close tomorrow. We saw at Valencia too that McLaren on Friday was far back in the second session and then on Saturday Hamilton was in front of us and Button right behind. I think it will be similar, with three or four teams fighting for positions and let’s hope we are a bit in front of them.”

One driver not at Silverstone this weekend is Bruno Senna, the nephew of three-time champion Ayrton, though his HRT F1 team said last night that the Brazilian will get the drive for the rest of the season.

Senna has been replaced here by Sakon Yamamoto, possibly because the Japanese driver has greater financial backing, and a statement from Hispania said: “In respect to the rumours about Bruno Senna’s current [status] with Hispania, the team wants to confirm that he has all the support, that he remains one of [our] official drivers and he will be continuing to drive the remaining races.”

Sport: Motor sport | guardian.co.uk