Trulli admits to 'lucky' pole

A key indicator of conditions during the session was the sector two times, the part of the circuit with most corners. Toyota driver Olivier Panis set the best Michelin sector 2 time early on, 54.3s, and that remained the benchmark until Mark Webber's Jaguar, the eighth car to run, improved to 53.7s.

The next car out, however, Antonio Pizzonia's Williams, could only manage 56.4s despite being slightly quicker than Webber in sector one. When Takuma Sato recorded 56.1s, the Renault engineers knew that the full wet tyres were overheating in sector two as the track started to dry and made the last minute decision to switch Trulli onto intermediates. The Italian immediately set a new best sector two time of 52.7s.

The next two drivers to run, Fernando Alonso and David Coulthard also ran intermediates and ultimately qualified third and fourth. But by the time Juan Pablo Montoya, next out, got onto the circuit, rain was falling again and Williams technical director Sam Michael said: "Juan did a great job just to keep the car on the circuit." The result, however, was 11th.

Trulli said: "I like Spa and today I was really brave, took a gamble and was very lucky. In morning practice we ran with full wets and the first time we used the intermediate tyre was during qualifying. I think I got the most out of my car."

Interestingly, both Ferraris, which were last to run and were on Bridgestone's extreme wets, equalled Trulli's sector one time and were 0.4s faster in sector two, but lost out in the final sector. Barrichello made a mistake by running wide at the Bus Stop chicane and dropped to sixth overall, while Schumacher missed Trulli's pole time by 0.07s.

"I can't complain," said Schumacher. "The conditions favoured others being a bit quicker in the last sector and I simply didn't have the traction there. When you use inters you have a bit more braking grip and traction and I lost the whole four tenths in the last chicane, honestly. I also struggled a little into Turn 5 early in the lap, got a bit sideways and lost a couple of tenths."