Motor Sport Formula OneThe dark clouds hovering over Hockenheim yesterday morning might have been interpreted by Kimi Raikkonen as a sign, some kind of ill portent. After all the Finn has been blighted over the past two race weekends by engine problems in the early part of the weekend that have robbed him of the chance to challenge the championship lead of Renault's Fernando Alonso, and deprived the crowds of the spectacle of the current fastest man in Formula One making a lightning-quick raid on the Renault driver's ever more fragile dominance of this year's title race.

But as Raikkonen ploughed through his programme for the day's testing to claim the second fastest time of the day - behind his team's tester Alex Wurz but ahead of Alonso - the bad omens of the deepening gloom transferred across to Alonso. If Raikkonen's Mercedes powerplant hangs tough for the remainder of the weekend, it could prove to be a watershed in the 23-year-old Spaniard's season.

He is currently clasping a 26-point lead over the Finn in the title race but his grip is loosening. Or at least would be loosening if his grasp on the lead wasn't being reinforced by McLaren, who seem determined to scupper all the good work that has gone into building a car that is the best the team has built since it's last period of glory under Mika Hakkinen's navigation in the late 1990s.

The team has suffered a catalogue of disasters this year, from Raikkonen's team-mate Juan Pablo Montoya fracturing a shoulder blade after just one race for the team, to Raikkonen's collapsed suspension when in the lead at the Nurburgring on the final lap, to Montoya being black-flagged in Montreal and on through the Michelin fiasco in Indianapolis and two blown engines for the Finn in recent events, malfunctions which dropped him 10 places on the grid and effectively dropped him out of contention.

But that was without factoring in Raikkonen's blinding pace and the pure speed of the McLaren. He climbed from 13th to second in France and from 12th to third in Silverstone a fortnight ago. The bad news, though, was that on both occasions Alonso, slower than the McLaren but still a country mile ahead of his other rivals, finished ahead of the Finn on both occasions. It should not be so tomorrow.

"McLaren are the team to beat," Alonso admitted this weekend. "If we can't win . . . we have to minimise the problem."

And he went on to articulate his major fear, that it will be Montoya and not Raikkonen who poses the greatest threat to his title aspiration, for even if Raikkonen wins all eight races left this season, all Alonso need do is finish second to wrap up his maiden championship. Throw Montoya in the mix, though, and things get complicated.

"Juan Pablo is always very aggressive in a race situation and is not a good guy to have a fight with because you can finish in the grass quite easily," said the Renault driver.

"Because the McLaren is quick, and they will always be competitive, then it is not a help for me, which means he could be a help for Kimi.

"I'm sure there will be times when Juan Pablo, Giancarlo (Fisichella) and also Michael (Schumacher) will help me in some races and take points off Kimi, but there will also be times when they take points off me."

And that is the hope for McLaren tomorrow. To see Raikkonen capitalise on the car superiority they have given him. To push the sometimes wayward Montoya into the frame of mind where he not only finishes but does so ahead of Alonso.

But as all the drivers head into this afternoon's crucial qualifying session, the most fervent hope at McLaren will surely be that their drivers' fragile Mercedes engines make it to the end of a single lap.