MPH: Mark Hughes on...

Fernando Alonso and Jarno Trulli, friends and former teammates, are locked in battle. Their respective teams, Renault and Toyota, are fighting for fourth place in the constructors' championship, worth around $10 million to whichever of them secures the position (assuming it's not Red Bull or Toro Rosso).

It's bringing a focus onto the efforts of their lead drivers. In 2004 at Renault, Trulli went bat-to-bat with Alonso in the first half of the season before his form slid in synch with his deteriorating relationship with team boss - and Alonso's manager - Flavio Briatore.

As Alonso went on to a much stronger second half, Trulli's rapport with the team broke down and he was driving a Toyota before the season was over. He's remained there ever since, in the years when his career might have been in full bloom had he been in a front-running car. But he's been resolute in how he's applied himself. This and an ability to conjure that special qualifying lap did for the F1 career of Ralf Schumacher, leaving Jarno as de facto team leader.

His bitterness about his treatment by Briatore is never far from the surface. He was delighted at taking third in France this year: it was here that he lost third place at the penultimate corner in '04, a small error that he feels Briatore used to justify an agenda to be rid of him and his rivalry with Alonso. You might think the link between those races - '04 and '08 - would not be made by a driver, would just be a bit of coincidence that onlookers might ponder. But Jarno makes that link. He even termed it 'revenge'.

Such rancour is understandable. In '04 Trulli, in his seventh full season, had made the breakthrough to the status of grand prix winner, with a superb drive at Monaco. This might have been the moment his F1 career really lit-up, but that momentum was pulled up short by what Jarno feels were puppet strings.

He was 29 years old that Monaco day, had just won his first GP and the world was at his feet. That's how it felt, anyway. Now, still with that solitary victory to his name, he's 34 and a new generation has taken the top drives. Lewis Hamilton, 12 years younger and in his first season of F3 when Jarno stood atop the Monte Carlo podium, is already seven times more successful in F1.

Written off by Briatore

As Jarno sees it, Briatore played God with his career. Briatore loses no sleep over that. He'd signed Trulli in '02, when Alonso was the team's test driver, and while Flavio could see Jarno was quick, he couldn't see the spark of leadership in him. Renault is a tough fighting unit that carries no passengers. Jarno's complex psyche never gelled there.

They couldn't see the mental toughness - because it's all so internal with him. He's an artist. Flavio had mentally written him off already. He was quick, therefore could be a useful support to a 'proper' number one, someone who could get the team behind him in the way Michael Schumacher had done back when the team was called Benetton and Flavio had a fresher complexion.

Increasingly, Briatore saw these traits in Alonso, came to see how his swashbuckling confidence was backed up by a real taste for the fight. Here was the team leader, something he instantly established himself as alongside Trulli in '03. It was mere confirmation of Briatore's instinct.

Jarno didn't see it like that, of course. He didn't like the feel of the '03 car, it didn't chime with how he needed a car to behave in order to perform. Alonso's less sensitive style worked better.

But the '04 car was different; Jarno could do things with it. Suddenly, he looked every bit as good as Fernando. Which to Briatore was simply inconvenient. He was building a team to challenge for the championship; he needed to base it around his man. Damn Jarno: not only did he not have the stuff of a team leader, now he was proving too quick to be of any use as a number two!

Return of the Fernando of old

So he went. And Alonso won two world championships. Then departed. Flavio was left with no team leader at a time when Renault dropped the ball. Fernando went on to his disastrous liaison with McLaren, and the spectacular fall-out from that led him back into Renault's arms.

But it was a rather different Renault from the one he'd left. The guys were the same, the ambience much as he remembered. But the car was a second off the pace. Alonso quickly became frustrated. In among that super-tight midfield group he didn't stand out as a double world champion, looked no better than any of the other good drivers in there - drivers like Jarno Trulli.

"I think Fernando was frustrated early in the season," says the team's Pat Symonds, "because we hadn't given him a winning car. But he seems to have found the challenge in getting the best from what we've given him. I'd say he's back to the old Fernando we knew in 2005 - more even than in '06 - and absolutely getting stuck in."

That was before Alonso's remarkable win in Singapore. Trulli - who drove an ultimately fruitless great race under very different circumstances - knows all too well what he is up against in the task now facing him.