Hamilton leads McLaren in dominant qualifying

F1 Grand Prix, GP Canada, Circuit Gilles Villeneuve

Lewis Hamilton has secured one more McLaren pole position as he committed no errors. Fernando Alonso on the other hand just missed his braking point in the final chicane and ends up in second place. He was previously fastest in the first two sectors. Nick Heidfeld is in third place ahead of the Ferraris of Raikkonen and Massa.

Before qualifying, the Canadian GP weekend has been quite eventful, most notably for Heikki Kovalainen and both Toyota drivers. Kovalainen first crashed his Renault on Friday and in the third practice session he had back luck on top as his car spoilt oil all over the track after a technical problem.

At the start of Q1, David Coulthard is the first to come out of the box but quickly discovers a problem on his car after missing his braking point repeatedly during his warm up lap. Only moment later Heikki Kovalainen again crashes his car into a wall. After bumping over the inner curbs, the rear wheels broke away and knocked the wall. The session was quickly red flagged for 5 minutes to clean up the debris of Kovalainen's broken rear wing.

After the fastest times were set with Raikkonen ahead of Alonso and Hamilton, Coulthard and Kovalainen were back on the track after quick fixing at their teams. Unfortunately for the latter, the Finn was not able to secure a slot in Q2. Together with him, Davidson, Schumacher, Wurz, Sutil and Albers are out.

The second part ran eventless with again the McLarens clearly fastest of the field. The surprises were this time at the end of the session. As Heidfeld's first quick lap was deleted he has to pull all the power out of his BMW at the closure of the session. He finally came out on 3rd place but slightly touched the wall at the outcome of the final chicane. Sato, Liuzzi, Barrichello, Coulthard, Button and Speed are knocked out.

During the opening stages of the final session, Alonso is asked to save slightly more fuel. Such a request may note that Alonso is to be on a heavier car than Hamilton and could run a longer stint at the beginning of the race. The first series of flying laps appears to contradict this theory as Alonso was the fastest.

The laps that really mattered did not change much to that until the final sector of Alonso where the Champion made a mistake and lost out on his chances for pole position. Hamilton is therefore on pole and aside of his teammate. BMW Sauber's Heidfeld is 3rd, followed by Kimi and the other Ferrari of Felipe Massa.