Despite being based both in Britain and France, this weekend is the one the marque most wants to succeed at, and its initial triumph - with Alonso taking top spot from Michael Schumacher by 0.273secs - will go some way to helping Magny-Cours pull in the fans that race organisers claim will be needed to keep the event on the calendar.

If the first half of the session suggested business as normal, with Rubens Barrichello sitting atop the times courtesy of his early starting slot - itself the result of an hydraulic failure in free practice that prevented him from completing a pre-qualifying run - part two produced a flurry of improvements that saw the Brazilian's Ferrari dumped almost out of the top ten.

Barrichello, despite not setting a lap to compare with the 1min 13secs efforts that headed the initial qualifying session, ruled the roost until the twelfth man to emerge from the pits, but the fluctuating temperatures in the heart of France enabled stand-in Williams driver Marc Gene to begin the process of lowering the bar.

The Spaniard, now more comfortable in the race-ready FW26 if not necessarily with the low fuel levels demanded by one-lap qualifying, benefited from a brief rise in temperature, and immediately began to drop below Barrichello's time. Quicker in both the first two sectors, only a mistake would prevent Gene from taking top spot, and so it proved, as the substitute clocked a 1min 14.275secs lap.

The temperature had dipped again as cloud cover greeted Takuma Sato, but the Japanese driver, buoyed by his Indianapolis podium, turned an early deficit into provisional pole by monstering the final, remodelled, chicane. The BAR had looked to be a handful in the middle part of the lap, but Sato overcame any handling deficiency with his virtuoso flicks of the wheel, knocking hundredths of a second off Gene's mark.

All the car control in the world was not going to be enough to preserve Sato's lead, however, as he was followed by the current cream of F1 talent and would have to hope that the conditions played a part in compromising ensuing set-up choices. It was not to work in his favour, as Jarno Trulli was the next man to move to the top of the rankings, despite what appeared to be an untidy lap not yielding its rewards until the closing stages.

If Trulli's time seemed to contradict a slightly rustic approach, Jenson Button gave the purists something to cheer, as his smooth style returned BAR to the head of the pile. Unhappy with a set-up change made for pre-qualifying, which left him down in sixth spot, the Briton instructed a return to his morning settings, and benefited by becoming the first driver to dip into the 1min 13s in qualifying proper. Although his 1min 13.995secs effort was a long way off Juan Montoya's 1min 13.377secs pre-Q lap - and a couple of tenths of his own previous best - Button was able to ease Trulli aside.

Renault quickly returned the favour, however, as, following the 'ad break' between the third and fourth quintets, Alonso took his R24 out on track. Once again, the Renault did not appear to be the nicest car to drive on the ultra-smooth Magny-Cours tarmac, but the Spaniard - who had admitted that he was looking for a change of fortune after recent results - made light of understeer through the first couple of turns to be ahead of the clock by the second checkpoint. By the end of the lap, he had not so much slipped under Button's time, but taken lumps out of it, lopping two-tenths from a target that had previously been reduced by fractions.

Still there were four cars to run and, with the track conditions apparently favouring each successive runner, the scene appeared set for a Schumacher-Montoya front row.

Ahead of the 'big two', however, lay the two 'new' McLarens, which David Coulthard and Kimi Raikkonen had taken to third and fourth places in pre-qualifying. The introduction of the MP4-19B had not been without its problems, with Raikkonen sitting out most of third practice and Coulthard fretting while a water pressure problem was investigated before pre-Q, and the Finn effectively blew his chance of qualifying in the top five by running wide through the opening corner. The error was more than enough to halt the run of successive pole times, dropping Raikkonen to a provisional sixth.

Ironically, given his apparent 'dislike' of the single-lap format, Coulthard's lap was better, the Scot looking smoother throughout, although dropping a little time in the second sector and leaving himself with a lot to do in S3 if he was to usurp Alonso. Opting not to ram his car over the kerbs at the final chicane, DC came home in 1min 13.987secs, good enough for second with two to run.

Schumacher began his flying lap suggesting that no-one was going to match his performance, blitzing the opening sector to the Adelaide hairpin in the quickest time. He was still up on everyone through S2, but locked up momentarily at Chateau d'Eau and put pole back in the balance. The mistake proved to be a little too much for even the six-time world champion to overcome, and he crossed the line a couple of tenths short of beating the Renault, almost falling into the clutches of the two British drivers now lurking on row two.

That left Montoya as the only man capable of deposing Renault from top spot in front of its countrymen, and the Colombian began his assault in similar fashion to Schumacher. Not quite on the Ferrari's pace through S1 and S2, Montoya was still well-placed for pole, but the revised FW26 - with some Renault-esque developments in its bodywork - looked a real handful at Imola and Chateau d'Eau, ultimately costing the Colombian not only pole, but a spot on either for the first two rows.

Once the dust had settled, Montoya found himself sharing row three with - and starting outside of - Trulli, while Sato, Gene, Raikkonen and Barrichello rounded out the top ten.

Behind the 'big guns' - and McLaren's general performance suggested that it could now begin to be included in that group - Cristiano da Matta put Toyota into the frame as 'best of the rest', out-gunning local hero Olivier Panis by six-tenths and three places to take eleventh.

Between the two Toyotas lay the Jaguar pairing of Mark Webber and Christian Klien, the Aussie enjoying a better run than of late as he attempts to land a Williams drive for 2005 (or earlier) and Klien benefiting from the return to Europe and a track he knows from his F3 forays. Webber made up a lot of time in the final sector, despite admitting that he could have got the unforgiving final chicane more to his liking.

Giancarlo Fisichella found just how unforgiving the chicane could be when he removed the suspension from his Sauber in free practice, but bounced back from that disappointment to pip team-mate Felipe Massa to 15th. A poor performance by the Swiss team it may appear to be, but the squad has set its sights on another strong race showing and appeared to have more fuel on board than most.

Having gotten the better of Jordan in both free practice sessions during the morning, Minardi was unable to do so when it really mattered, with both Zsolt Baumgartner and Gianmaria Bruni having to settle for the tenth row. Neither driver was particularly untidy, but simply did not have the pace to live with Nick Heidfeld or Giorgio Pantano. Pantano would regret a minor error heading into turn two, running wide on cool tyres and costing himself valuable tenths, as he dropped behind team-mate Heidfeld for the first time all weekend.