"When I first joined the EBU four years ago, in my mind there was no way bridge was a sport. But the more I got into it the more I became convinced that it is. "If you accept the argument that sport is as much about thinking and using the brain, not merely running around and kicking a ball, then you can understand how mind games like bridge and chess require similar strategies. So, is bridge really sport? Most of the 1,700 players who gathered in Brighton last week, filling every hall, meeting room and overflowing on to the balconies at the Metropole Hotel in Europe's largest annual bridge festival, the 38th English Bridge Union summer congress, will argue that it is. And the International Olympic Committee are said to be thinking seriously about it. It is on the cards that another activity may be introduced into the 2012 schedule: bridge, which is spearheading a campaign to have a Mind Games Olympics staged as an offshoot of the real thing. With luck that will all prove a good augury for the race, too..

They are not yet aware of it, but the team Sebastian Coe is assembling to run the London Olympics may have to start playing mind games Or at least, learning about them. So far it has been one of those unusual weekends in a place that has a real buzz to it. When car-hire prices multiplied eightfold over European rates many came here expecting the worst, but the country, and Istanbul in particular, has seductive qualities and the good feelings have been reciprocated. Even the Kurdish rebel group PKK, who were expected to disrupt the event after recently setting off a bomb in Pendik, only a few miles from the track, declared a one-month ceasefire in their campaign to damage tourism in the country.There was further cross-pollination when the Jordan team principal, Colin Kolles, was obliged to fall back on his skills in dentistry, educating local practitioners by doing a root-canal treatment on his driver Tiago Monteiro. The bumps here are pretty bad."Earlier on Villeneuve had pushed a little too hard in turn eight and spun his Sauber Petronas, but when Michael Schumacher came out as the penultimate runner in a Ferrari that was clearly struggling for grip all weekend, he went so smoothly through the corner that it came as a surprise when he unaccountably spun two turns later.If Turkey has quickly embraced F1, the feeling is mutual. So he was being ever so slightly circumspect."I was deliberately going in a little slower because of what had happened to Taku," he admitted.

"But I hit a bump, the car bottomed out and I got some flick oversteer Then the car got away from me on another bump in turn 10. Yesterday Villeneuve described the double left-handed turn eight as "the toughest corner in racing right now, even harder than Spa's Eau Rouge or Suzuka's 130R".Button knew that earlier in the session his team-mate Sato had messed up there after going in too fast, hitting a bump, and running very wide on the exit. Alonso lapped in 1:27.050, which Fisichella just beat with 1:27.039. After his retirement in Hungary Juan Pablo Montoya was the fourth man out in the session, and thus did a fine job to take fourth on the grid with 1:27.352.The main thrust of this afternoon's race is thus a McLaren versus Renault encounter, which is as it should be given the battle for the drivers' and constructors' world championships. But Button should have been in there too.The Englishman has been quick all weekend for BAR- Honda, the team he now does not want to leave, and had set the fastest time in the first sector when he fell foul of the myriad bumps on this new circuit.