Prologue - Hello there. After a couple of weekends where PatroniseF1's latest recruit, The Hand, has served his MBM apprenticeship by being forced to come up with things to say during a Saturday practice session, he has moved up to bigger and better things (like Friday practice, for example). So I'm afraid that I'm back on FP3 duties this weekend, and raring to go in this almost-climactic not-quite-finale to the never-thrilling 2009 season. It's time for the official Make FP3 Lethargy History theme song!
Friday's running seemed to conclude that most of the predictions about this weekend will come to pass. Red Bull have an edge on Brawn GP, Barrichello has an edge on Button, and the main spoiler for Vettel and Barrichello's hopes of a win to keep their championship hopes alive is likely to be a McLaren, or more specifically, the McLaren with Lewis Hamilton in it.
Will any of these preconceptions be challenged in FP3? Or will everyone just meaninglessly pootle around for most of the session before a few low-fuel qualifying simulations put Romain Grosjean or someone equally naff at the top of the times right at the end? We'll find out the answer to that in just about half an hour's time. I can't wait. No, honestly.
14.40 BST - Clearly someone, somewhere really really hates me. After the miserable all-nighter I pulled in Japan to cover two effectively rained-off Friday practice sessions, the early news is that the rain is currently lolloping down over in Sao Paulo. This is news that Patty has gleaned all by itself and has in no way just stolen from an alternative Formula One online text commentary service. Honest.
14.45 BST - Being as I have no pictures from Brazil right now, here's the Official F1 website's take on the precipitation issue: "The weather now looks set to decline a little. Saturday started damp and thunderstorms and an ambient temperature high of 22 degrees Celsius are anticipated." Decline a little???
14.50 BST - The more this rain gets described, the worse it sounds. This could well be another gleeful hour of "spot the car", filled with random shots of Force India drivers sitting on the pit wall looking miserable. Still, could be worse, there could be nobody reading this. Ha ha....oh.
14.55 BST - Christ. Live pictures are here, and the track is wet. And not just wet, it's weeeeeeeeeeeet.
Final practice delayed - The weather is so unrelentingly awful, the medical helicopter cannot safely take off, so the start of the session has been delayed. This is fun. So anyway, how has your week been?
A story while we wait - The Belgian GP in 2004, which yours truly attended, was a similarly wet affair to this. The Head and chums got up early on Saturday, braving our hangovers, to grab a place in the stands for Saturday practice, only to get utterly soaked through, and spend two hours of our lives watching a TV screen flash up "Start of practice delayed by ten minutes" every ten minutes. Eventually a 15 minute session was scheduled, which ended after about three minutes when Jimmy Bruni binned his Minardi in spectacular fashion at Eau Rouge. It was all an awful lot of fun, as you can imagine. Almost as much fun as this, in fact.
The rain - Seems to be getting heavier. Standing water all over the infield, TV footage of sad-looking fans sheltering under inadequate-looking plastic rain ponchos. No word as to when this session will actually start, if it starts at all.
15.15 BST - Ted Kravitz makes the point from the Brawn GP garage that this isn't good news for the boys in the dodgily-sponsored cars. Neither driver has yet sorted a set-up yet, especially Button. Though if it stays like this for the rest of the weekend, a perfect dry set-up is going to be about as useful as alcohol-free gin.
Ted chats to Nico - While biblical-sized lightning forks pepper the circuit. "Do you want to go out even if they start the session, Nico?" is his baffling opening question, as if the Williams might in some way be planning to go out if they don't start the session. Nico responds with an answer in a tone of voice that you'd expect he'd also employ when explaining how to make toast to a small, slightly stupid child.
15.25 BST - It's still raining.
There's some confusion - As to whether they could run the full hour of practice as and when the session begins. Adrian Sutil's engineer reckons they'll get 10-15 minutes of running "at the end of the session" even though the session hasn't officially started yet. Qualifying is due to begin in two and a half hours, and that can't be pushed back because of TV schedules and the like, so it's doubtful we'll get anything like the full hour. At the moment it's doubtful whether we'll get anything at all.
This - Is a miserable state of affairs. As is the current situation in the football. My sense of despair is just about total.
15.35 BST - To add a vague sense of farce to proceedings, the weather centre at the track has apparently just been struck by lightning, crippling the team's radar reporting software.
Session will start in 5 minutes. (15.42 BST)
15.40 BST - And to clarify the earlier confusion, this session will finish as scheduled at the end of the hour, so we have an 18 minute session in the wet. Glory be.
0 mins - Away we go, in this truncated session. Fisichella, Kovalainen and Rosberg slither out onto track as soon as the green light is shown, followed by Heidfeld, Hamilton, Vettel and a bunch of others.
3 mins - Fisi does an install lap and then gives up, as does Heidfeld. But Kovalainen goes round to complete a 1:31.716. Nico goes over a second quicker, because he's brilliant.
6 mins - Nico beats his own session-topper on the next lap. Hamilton is also lapping and goes 3rd of three, but everyone else has pitted straight away, which is mad, assuming this wet stuff is hanging around for qualifying.
8 mins - Nico sets a 1:25.060 to move six tenths faster than Heikki. This is nice, smooth improvement lap-on-lap from Nico. Nakas goes third and Button goes 5th, nearly six seconds off Rosberg's time.
10 mins - Raining again, according to BBC's pit lane reporters. Nico still improving by agood half a second every lap. Grosjean gets on the slippery inside kerb of the Senna S and completes the 97th 360 degree spin of his nascent F1 career. Nico, Nakas, Alonso, Button, Heikki is the top 5. Only 11 cars have set times.
12 mins - Woah. Alonso has a huge wobble in turn 5 in the other Renault, and somehow keeps the car pointing in the right direction as he ploughs through the grass. Kimi has had a spin as well as everyone starts to discover the limits of cohesion on this sodden track.
14 mins - Oh for pity's sake. Grosjean has properly binned it this time, right around where Alonso went off a lap ago, but he can't hold it, the car digs in the wet ground, nearly flips over, and goes nose-first into the infield tyre barrier. That could have been VERY nasty indeed. Thankfully, the Frenchman is OK, but we had a red flag.
15.58 BST - That is probably that, then. Two minutes still on the clock, but the red flag is still being shown. Nico, Nakas, Button, Alonso, Sutil, Grosjean, Bwemmy, Trulli and Heidfeld was the top ten when Romain knacked it.
16.00 BST - Ted reckons Hamilton is the winner from this session and Button is the loser. To back up that point, Hamilton is 17th in the times, Button 3rd.
End of the session - Final, largely meaningless order: Rosberg, Nakajima, Button, Alonso, Sutil, Grosjean, Buemi, Trulli, Heidfeld, Webber, Raikkonen, Kovalainen, Alguersuari, Barrichello, Vettel, Liuzzi, Hamilton, Fisichella, Kubica, Kobayashi.
Epilogue - I hate rain. Rain is rubbish. Rain is a pointless type of weather. Stupid rain. Join The Hand from 17.30 BST or thereabouts for all the fun of what promises to be a crazy qualifying session. Cheerio.
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