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Like everyone else, I could barely believe what was happening when Fernando Alonso sat in the Hungaroring pits at the end of third qualifying. The clock was ticking, and it was blindingly obvious when Alonso finally pulled away that Lewis Hamilton would not make it round to start his final lap.
From my vantage point in the media centre, I watched in disbelief as Alonso just made it across the line, and Hamilton didn't. It was extraordinary, and there seemed to be no explanation other than either a major mistake by the team, or - the one that proved to be correct - a spectacularly unsubtle piece of gamesmanship by the Spaniard.
At the time, of course, we had no way of knowing that the world champion was in fact responding to an earlier flouting of team instructions by Hamilton, and that indeed internally Lewis was regarded as the villain of the piece. Over the next few hours the story escalated, and so did the pressures inside the McLaren camp.
