Can Jenson win at Imola?

Qualifying is no longer a certain barometer of race performance given varying fuel loads, but the best intelligence is that Button's stunning pole position is a reflection of genuine pace and that the BAR was not excessively light on fuel.

Although Ferrari's Jean Todt said that Michael Schumacher's mistake at Variante Alta cost him pole position, with six-time champion himself says not. Schumacher says that the BAR's third sector time would have prevented him taking pole in any case.

Many of BAR's rivals were quick to pay tribute to the team, Williams driver Juan Pablo Montoya chief among them.

"It would be nice to see Jenson winning," Montoya said. "He's been down so many bad roads. Now he's coming up. It's pretty amazing. I think BAR and Honda have done a bloody good job. It's amazing. You see the people like [BAR technical director] Geoff Willis who was here at Williams and now he's there doing the job. They said here that he couldn't do the job and now he's done a car that's half a second quicker than ours. It's the truth, no?"

To do a quick lap at Imola, a car needs to be able to use the kerbs without becoming unsettled to the point where the driver is off the throttle for too long and that is clearly a BAR strong point, going part of the way to explaining Button's stunning pace in sector three, where he was almost 0.3s quicker than Montoya's Williams, which was second fastest. The sector contains the Variate Alta, which has the most aggressive kerbs and is where Schumacher made his mistake pushing too hard.

Montoya added: "The Williams is probably the best car over the kerbs but Jenson's engineer was here at Williams two years ago, and the aerodynamicist as well, so they know how exactly. They know exactly what we're running. So there's no big secret."

Of speculation that Honda's latest engine could actually now be the most powerful in F1, Montoya said: "I can believe that. It's probably that or the Ferrari."

Button himself is more cautious about the chances of scoring his first win.

"The race is a different proposition from qualifying," he said. "It's going to be great starting with nobody in front of me, but we are going to have to watch Michael every step of the way."