F1 Racing live has a report that, in speaking to the Spanish press, Alonso has been less than complimentary about the Renault team.

AS newspaper quoted Alonso as saying: “They wanted us to finish second and third because they do not want me to take the number one to a different team.”

He said there is ‘no doubt’ that the constructors’ championship is therefore more important to Renault in 2006, and added that only ‘some’ in blue and yellow uniforms were disappointed to lose the Chinese Grand Prix to Ferrari’s Michael Schumacher.

“Some others are happy,” Alonso continued, “because we went past Ferrari in the team battle. They are not helping me as much as they could.”

To me, this sounds like a journalist’s invention. It makes no sense, since Alonso would hardly encourage the team to help him by saying such things. The decision to change the front tires at the first pitstop was a joint decision between Alonso and the team and so he is as much to blame for the mistake as anyone. And that business about not taking the number one to another team is just laughable; Renault stand to gain just as much good publicity from a driver’s championship as the constructor’s and the matter of a mere number makes no difference to that.

Renault have known for a long time that Alonso will be going to McLaren at the end of the year – were all his wins in the first half of the season a mistake by the team? It is ridiculous to suggest that any team would sabotage their own efforts for the sake of a number (that you’d have trouble finding on the car anyway).

So I don’t believe the report. It’s just an unscrupulous journalist trying to stir up some controversy and sell a few more papers as a result. I just hope that the whole thing will annoy Alonso and Renault to the extent that they win at Suzuka by a huge margin.

And so far my prediction that Renault and Michelin would catch up with Ferrari development after the Monza race has proved correct. There was little to choose between the cars in the dry at Shanghai and in the wet the Renault was clearly superior. Although I see all the pundits running for cover in the Michael camp, I stand by my forecast of another Alonso championship this year.

And the entire Renault team will celebrate his victory with him without thought of which car will wear the number one in future.

The qualifying sessions for the Chinese Grand Prix have confirmed what we already knew: Michelin’s wet tire has an advantage over Bridgestone’s. With the track very wet from the start and then drying slowly and in patches, the Bridgestone runners were in trouble. Of them all, only Michael Schumacher managed to squeeze into Q3.

He then put the Ferrari into sixth spot on the grid, almost a superhuman feat, given the disadvantage of the tires. Whatever we think of him as a man, there is no doubting his driving skills.

It was Michelin’s day, however, and they made the best of it. The Renaults were the class of the field, easily grabbing the front row, Alonso on pole. Perhaps surprisingly, the Hondas were next up with Barrichello third and Button fourth. Their times were identical but the Brazilian set his before Jenson and so goes ahead.

Then came the McLarens, sandwiching Michael. Raikkonen did very little running until Q3, perhaps confident that he could get the time when he needed it. And, although Pedro de la Rosa spun his McLaren into some elegant manouvers off-track, he will be sufficiently close to his teammate to support him in the race.

The BMW Saubers were next up, Heidfeld ahead of Kubica, and tenth spot was claimed by Robert Doornbos – an excellent effort for his first race for Red Bull.

Now thoughts turn to the race, of course, and that means the weather. The meteorologists seem a little confused and some are predicting dry conditions, others opt for rain. All we can say for sure is that, if it rains, the Renaults will win. If it turns out dry, they will still be in with a very good chance but Michael and Kimi are not likely to make it easy for them.

Highlight of qualifying? That has to be Scott Speed in his Toro Rosso – for a few minutes it looked as though he would make it into Q3. And his time in Q2 would have put him in seventh spot, had he been able to repeat it. As it is, he starts from eleventh – not a bad effort at all.

I told you Massa was coming good. All weekend he has been on Schumacher’s pace and it was no surprise to me that he grabbed pole in the last few minutes of qualifying. In the race, of course, it will be different – Michael will gravitate to the front and Felipe will ride shotgun.

Ferrari and Bridgestone still have their advantage in the heat, obviously, but Renault should take heart from the fact that they are back at the front of the Michelin runners. The gap closes and Alonso should be in with a chance of retaining his championship at the end of the year.

BMW Sauber continue to improve and benefited from Ralf Schumacher’s ten-place demotion from fifth, with Heidfeld inheriting Ralf’s position and Kubica in eighth. Jenson Button looked very fast in the Honda but had slipped down to sixth by the end. I suspect that he will have a good race tomorrow with the team still on a high after Hungary.

The surprise of the session was the disappointing form of the McLarens, Raikkonen managing only seventh and de la Rosa missing the second cut in eleventh. It seems this season that as fast as McLaren make improvements, their rivals do the same. For Mercedes, it must be especially galling to see BMW ease past them.

Michael must be favorite for the race win and a Ferrari one-two looks quite likely too. But racing is a funny old game and usually confounds our best guesses. So I’ll not make any prediction but admit that I would dearly love to see the Honda team amaze themselves and everyone else with another win for Jenson Button.

The FIA’s Court of Appeal has ruled that the mass dampers are illegal after all. Which also means that it was optimistic to suggest the court might take into account the unfairness of banning technologies halfway through a season.

As we all know, the team that will suffer the most from this ruling is Renault. It is suggested that the dampers are worth half a second a lap to them, which would explain their loss of form ever since the ban came into effect. And the Hungarian race was no pointer to their having found a solution; what made the difference there was the superiority of the Michelin wet tires, a fact demonstrated by the resurgence of the other Michelin-shod teams in that race.

Although several teams, including Ferrari, have used the dampers at various times through the year, Renault seems to have been the only constructor to incorporate them into their design from the beginning. Since the system had been used in 2005 without objection from the FIA or the stewards, it was reasonable to assume that there would be no problem in this integration into the design. But, of course, that takes no account of the unpredictability and arbitrariness of the FIA.

The implications for the future are more far-reaching than might be thought at first. It is more than just one championship that is affected by the decision. What encouragement does this give to the designers in their quest to break new technological ground and so gain a performance advantage? If the FIA can ban previously-accepted technology in mid-season, what guarantees are there that any team that, through inspiration or hard work, gains a slight advantage over the others will be allowed to keep their new tweak?

Obviously, as long as the FIA continue to behave in this manner, there are no guarantees and the motivation to advance technology must suffer as a result. The situation is complicated further by the fact that the FIA does not ban all new tweaks and so it becomes a gamble to introduce anything new. It is tempting to say that, if your name is Ferrari, you can go ahead, but otherwise you had better be pretty careful about anything you put on the cars. But I won’t; I think things have moved on a bit since the days when it seemed that the FIA was a rubber stamp in Ferrari’s hands.

As for introducing a revolution, like Cooper’s idea of putting the engine in the rear or Chapman’s ground effect, forget it. Anything that gives such an enormous advantage will be banned as soon as it sees the light of day. I wonder how long it will be before F1 becomes a standardized car formula…