Motor Racing: Hill ready to play the spoiler

Damon Hill is set to be the spoiler in the Hungarian Grand Prix after stealing the thunder in qualifying yesterday by thrusting his hitherto recalcitrant Arrows-Yamaha to its best grid position of the year. While Jacques Villeneuve spent the whole qualifying session trying in vain to catch Michael Schumacher's Ferrari, Hill lurked at the lower end of the top 10 until the dying moments, when he vaulted into third place.

"I always thought there would be a good possibility of qualifying in the top 10, but I'm amazed to be so high up," he said. "I just got the hammer down and went for it. The thing about this place is that horsepower is less of a factor, and a good lap is all down to chassis set-up."

The upswing could not have come at a better time for him, as the Formula One driver merry-go-round gathers momentum. Ferrari recently confirmed that Eddie Irvine will remain as Schumacher's partner in 1998, but elsewhere situations are less clear-cut.

At McLaren, Ron Dennis at present has Hill, the Hockenheim winner Gerhard Berger, and his regular drivers, David Coulthard and Mika Hakkinen, dangling on strings, each coveting the chance of a seat. And Berger's present Benetton partner, Jean Alesi, also faces the queue at the F1 job centre. The chances are that one of this quintet of top-line stars may be pitched into the abyss of a second-rate drive or, worse, enforced retirement.

Hill is holding out for McLaren after Dennis asked him not to sign for anyone else without advising him first, although cynics see this not so much as any sort of firm commitment but rather as polite interest generated more by the incoming technical chief Adrian Newey, with whom Hill worked so well at Williams, and the board of Mercedes-Benz, who would relish the publicity bonus of employing a former champion.

Hill's understandable prevarication appears to have frustrated Peter Sauber and his partner, Fritz Kaiser. While Hill and his manager, Michael Breen, were left to discuss what they had seen during a visit to Sauber's opulent premises at Hinwil, Switzerland, last Monday, Sauber and Kaiser tired of their "decision tomorrow" tactics and decided that if Hill didn't want their $8m (pounds 5m), there seemed little point going on.

"We have had several discussions and we have met several times," Sauber, one of the more straightforward team owners, said. "We have discussed terms but we have reached no relationship whatsoever. And so we decided to stop the talks."

In this game, what is off this week could well be on again next. But yesterday's performance will have done little to harm Hill's McLaren aspirations. Meanwhile, Coulthard's performance will have done little to assist his. The Scot qualified only eighth, more than half a second behind Hakkinen, after spinning on his final attempt. "I just made a mistake," he admitted. "I got a little bit sideways and the car just got away from me."

Coulthard has the mien of a man under pressure, and parried questions about the future defensively: "I am the team's contracted driver until the end of the season. Contracts are confidential documents and if I were to talk about it at all, that would be a breach of contract and I could be kicked out of the car before Sunday." It would indeed be ironic if Hill were to be his replacement at McLaren, for the Scot is of the firm belief that he was the faster of the two towards the end of their partnership at Williams two years ago.

The Hungarian Grand Prix will most likely revolve around two factors - the start and tyres. It is almost impossible to overtake at the Hungaroring, placing a premium on a good getaway, and it remains to be seen whether Schumacher and Villeneuve will pay any penalty for opting for Goodyear's softer compound tyres in preference to the harder rubber chosen by the rest of the American company's runners. Hill's Bridgestones have so far looked promising in long-distance tests, giving the Japanese company high hopes of its first F1 victory to match its recent 500th triumph in America's IndyCar series.

While Schumacher yesterday radiated his usual insouciant calmness as he set the pace, Villeneuve and his team-mate Heinz-Harald Frentzen again aroused the ire of Williams' technical director, Patrick Head, who said trenchantly: "Jacques wasted his first two runs, while we asked Heinz- Harald to do two flying laps on his harder compound tyres and he didn't."

With the Williams team thus in disarray, the odds appear to favour the championship leader Ferrari, but Hill would love nothing more than the chance to put one over both of the men he beat to the 1996 crown. "I don't have a championship to think about," he said, "and this is our best opportunity for a win."