Alonso is Back Up to Speed and in the Shake-up

Lewis Hamilton found himself pitched into a wheel-to-wheel battle with his old nemesis Fernando Alonso yesterday in the battle for fastest time in the second free practice session for tomorrow's French grand prix, the Spanish driver's Renault demonstrating a long overdue turn of speed on its home circuit after a generally disappointing 2008 season so far.

Alonso, who left the McLaren team at the end of last season after serving just a year of his originally planned three-year contract, ended the day just 0.076sec ahead of the Ferraris of Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonen with Hamilton, penalized 10 places on the grid this weekend, trailing in fourth.

In the morning the Briton had set the second-fastest time behind Massa and ahead of his McLaren team-mate Heikki Kovalainen. "We had a small engine problem at the end of the morning session," said Alonso, "but my mechanics did a remarkable job to fix the car and we were able to continue our free practice without any problems. We tried several new elements that we ran in the test last week and, looking ahead to qualifying, our level of performance is rather encouraging."

For his part, Hamilton ended the day in a confident mood, optimistic that he had found a decent chassis set-up with which he could launch a competitive assault in this afternoon's battle for pole position. "We made a great deal of progress this morning and seemed to get the car dialed in nicely to the circuit," said Hamilton. "I had a twitchy moment at the exit of turn three and ran wide into the gravel. It cut short my run with no major damage and slightly disturbed our run but we are looking competitively quick for the weekend."

Robert Kubica, who posted his first formula one victory in Canada a fortnight ago, found himself struggling with his BMW Sauber suffering from lack of traction as well as steering problems. "The balance of the car was a bit strange and difficult to drive. We've to analyze the data and see what we can do for tomorrow."