Mark Hughes: Trackside View

The first 12 minutes after the track opens and no-one has yet completed a flying lap. Most have done their installations - Lewis Hamilton extrovertly sideways well before the first swimming pool apex - but are now waiting in the garages for the track to get hotter.

Ideally they need someone out there rubbering it in too, though no-one wants to be the first, the sweeper, the fluffer. But it's calling out to one man and he can resist no longer. Jarno Trulli's affinity with the place is deep.

Soon he's hustling the Toyota through the left-right of the swimming pool section, fast enough that the car's on its tippy-toes, alive, neurotic, ready to dart off, requiring his firm hand. When Ralf Schumacher comes through in the sister car a few laps later it looks inert by comparison, merely following its front wheels.

Hamilton, out now that the Toyotas have dusted off the surface, is different again. Where Jarno is full of tiny, fast steering inputs, Lewis is all one long graceful arc, extravagant oversteer stance as soon as he turns in, straight by the time he's at the first apex, minimal input in between.

Leaning on the right rear in between the two apices he even has time for a powerslide, like he has more frames per second than most others. The McLaren's languid, graceful direction change is in odd contrast to the enormous speed that he's carrying.

Fernando Alonso in the same place looks edgy, turning the car in with a less expansive, more nervy and sudden direction change, then not allowing it to breathe as freely. He's on top of it more, needing to modulate brakes and steering to get the direction change where Lewis is using yaw change to achieve the same.

Alonso's method doesn't work as well in this part of the track. He still hasn't got a full direction change by the time he hits the second kerb, so needs further steering as he lands, giving the car a wiggling action where Hamilton's is smooth and clean, its driver already looking ahead.

A few laps later and Fernando has gone onto the supersoft tyres, and now his style is working much better. Now the extra grip of the front end can get him that direction change before he reaches the kerb.

The sun beats down as Felipe Massa charges past, bullying the Ferrari into giving him some feedback, like he's not yet sure what it's going to do if he lets it run amok. During his subsequent laps, now with some feel for it, he begins to smooth it out. But he looks less at ease.