McLaren Chief Says Track is Not Ideal But Briton Can Triumph Again

Lewis Hamilton yesterday demonstrated his single-minded determination to consolidate his lead in the drivers' world championship by posting fastest time in the second practice session for tomorrow's Canadian grand prix, his McLaren-Mercedes just pipping Robert Kubica's BMW Sauber with five minutes remaining before the chequered flag.

Third fastest was Kimi Raikkonen's Ferrari ahead of Heikki Kovalainen's McLaren and the early pacesetter Felipe Massa, whose Ferrari rolled to a standstill out on the circuit with mechanical problems with 16 minutes of the session left.

The first 90-minute session saw many of the quickest runners remaining snugly out of the rain in their pit-lane garages, unwilling to sacrifice one of their precious sets of full rain tires on the abrasive track surface which was drying out after an initial bout of heavy rain.

"We have a car which excels in high-speed corners and there aren't too many of those in Canada," Martin Whitmarsh, the McLaren chief executive, said before the start of the action at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve. "However, we have a reasonably good track record at this event. It is about high speeds down the straight, braking stability and traction out of the corners. We have every reason to believe we have made improvements to the car and the whole team is looking forward to carrying our championship campaign forward."

Hamilton, celebrating the first anniversary of his maiden formula one victory at the windy track beside the St Lawrence river, did an absolutely perfect job in tricky conditions to herald the possibility of a repeat of his Monaco win two weeks ago, a success which carried him to the top of the championship rankings. Yet Kubica kept up the pressure on the 23-year old Englishman right through to the end of the session, ending the day 0.271 sec adrift to signal that he will soon be challenging for his first grand prix victory.

"I love the track, there's not a part that I don't like," said Hamilton, who had to drive at high speed around a groundhog which had strayed on to the circuit.

Earlier Massa waited right to the end of the damp first practice session to go quickest. The Ferrari driver's lap time of 1min17.553sec was good enough to fend off several last-ditch attempts from rivals, with Kubica getting closest.

It was a question of being out on the drying track at the right time, as Jenson Button discovered when he dropped from fourth to last in just eight minutes in the closing moments of the session.