Although the format is all-new for 2005, with the second session run with race fuel on Sunday morning and the times aggregated to form the grid, it was actually freak conditions and not the new system which was the catalyst behind an unusual session.

As Trulli said, "It was a bit of a lottery and although second is a good result, I just hope that we have stable conditions tomorrow."

In fact, so big are the gaps between the drivers, reflecting the rapidly changing damp/wet conditions, that barring a disaster, Trulli should start the race from the top three provided that the consistent conditions he craves, present themselves on Sunday morning.

Track conditions were damp to start with and Trulli used intermediate Michelins to set a 1m35.276s lap, the quickest at that point. The strength of Trulli's performance was obvious when following drivers were almost 3s slower on the same tyre. The track continued to dry, however, and Mild Seven Renault F1 Team driver Giancarlo Fisichella managed to take provisional pole position by using dry tyres to go round in 1m33.171s.

As soon as Fisichella finished his lap, heavy rain soaked the circuit and no other driver had a realistic chance of approaching the leading times. Behind Fisichella and Trulli, Mark Webber's BMW Willliams was third fastest (1m36.717s), Jacques Villeneuve was fourth (1m36.984s) for Sauber Petronas and the Red Bulls of Christian Klien (1m37.486s) and David Coulthard (1m38.320s) were fifth and sixth.

Ralf Schumacher was one of those drivers unfortunate enough to have to set his time after the rain and ended up 17th fastest in 1m51.495s. To put that into perspective, however, his seven times champion brother Michael was hit even harder, running in the heaviest of the rain and lapping in 1m57.931s - the slowest of the drivers who completed their lap.

"It's motor racing and sometimes these things happen," Ralf said philosophically. The gaps mean that there is going to be very little chance to make up ground in the second session and I think quite a lot of drivers and teams will be turning their attention to optimising race strategy."

Summing up his feelings so far, Trulli added: "Of all the people who ran on the intermediate tyre I was quickest, which is satisfying. The performance generally has been good and it is a great start to the season. With the new format it's a bit of a gamble and we have to see what happens tomorrow but it would be nice to score points in the first race."

Panasonic Toyota Racing's Technical Director Chassis, Mike Gascoyne said: "Jarno did a great job, everything that could have been asked, but poor Ralf had his hands tied by the conditions. The grid certainly looks like it has been mixed up, but not in the way that anyone intended! We will now do all we can to try and get Toyota's first front row grid position.