Schumacher's lap wasn't coated in perfection, but such was his advantage that he was still able to canter to his seventh career pole at the Circuit de Catalunya – and his fourth out of five races this season. Neither did the German find the circuit in its best condition, as a compromised first qualifying meant he went out twelfth of the twenty runners in the final session.

“I was a bit worried going out so early wasn't really the best thing for us – but it was fantastic to finish where we finished! To be up front and ahead of BAR is a bit of a surprise for us after seeing their speed here in winter testing and this weekend.”

But instead of a BAR-Honda, it will be Colombia's Juan Pablo Montoya who lines up alongside Schumacher, setting up an intriguing run down to the first corner tomorrow. The pair have a history of on-track incidents, most recently in the last race at Imola where Montoya publicly accused Schumacher of unsporting driving.

Montoya will know deep down that contesting the first corner will likely be no more than a matter of pride. The BMW-Williams driver was more than six tenths of a second behind Schumacher over a single lap today, and it is considered unlikely that there was much variation in fuel loads.

British challenger Jenson Button, who has shocked with his pace thus far this year, had by far his worst qualifying showing of 2004. The car clearly had pace, but a promising first sector came to nothing as Button was caught out by an awkward Barcelona wind gust at the fast right-handed Campsa corner. The car pushed wide in the blind turn, and Button was forced to get out of the throttle for a couple of seconds as he had all four wheels on the grass.

“It's very disappointing, I was going quite well,” said Button, who salvaged 14th on the grid. “We struggled a bit with the setup this morning, but things were looking good. The wind was one of the reasons for my excursion. We've got a fight on our hands tomorrow.”

But BAR still had reason to celebrate, for Takuma Sato will start the race in third place, the best qualifying show of his career. The Japanese driver, who went out directly after Button, kept it together to put in a lap that kept him on for a front row slot until Montoya pipped him on the last lap of the afternoon.

“It's really nice to be up here! This means a lot to myself and the team,” said Sato. “To get a start position like this is a very happy feeling. We had a really strong free practice this morning and we knew we could go well in qualifying. I had a nice balance through Campsa and didn't worry too much about Jenson's incident before me!”Jarno Trulli lines up fourth tomorrow, after a good lap that blew away team-mate Fernando Alonso, who seems unlikely to repeat last year's second place from eighth on the grid. Alonso was out early in the session and recorded an unspectacular lap, whilst Trulli did his best in a car that lacks ultimate pace. Despite being up on the second row, the Renault driver was over a second slower than Schumacher.

Rubens Barrichello again failed to get the same performance from the F2004 that Michael Schumacher did, and could not manage better than fifth place, having gone out eighth after a slow first qualifying session. He held top slot only until eleventh man out Sato went four tenths quicker.

Ralf Schumacher has also got little to write home about after setting himself up to start sixth, but McLaren's woes ran far deeper. David Coulthard just scraped into the top ten (1.6 seconds behind Schumahcer), and at no point looked like he would do much better than that. Kimi Raikkonen in the other Mercedes-powered car got thirteenth after a lap that featured a couple of small mistakes and wide moments.

After a hard start to the year, Toyota will be rather pleased to have Olivier Panis seventh on the grid, leading the redefined “second division”. His time was good enough for fourth on the grid at one stage. His colleague Cristiano da Matta will start 11th.

Mark Webber starts ninth for Jaguar, and didn't look much like repeating his front-row start from three races ago in Malaysia. Christian Klien was fourth man out this afternoon and could only manage sixteenth. This is the first 2004 track that the Austrian can claim to have had substantial test mileage on during the winter.

The Sauber duo of Felipe Massa and Giancarlo Fisichella ran the first session on low fuel, coming second and third behind Montoya. The ploy allowed them to go out almost last in the session that mattered, but didn't help the Swiss cars very much. Fisichella returned to Massa-beating form with a lap good enough for twelfth, whilst his team-mate is down in seventeenth after a couple of errors.

Nick Heidfeld was a star for Jordan by taking fifteenth on a day when nobody had to completely abort a lap through errors. The second Jordan of Giorgio Pantano starts 19th, between the two Minardis of Gianmaria Bruni and Zsolt Baumgarter, who was 1.6 seconds slower than his team-mate.