Canadian GP 2007

JUNE 8, 2007

Practice 2 Report - Fernando in control

Fernando Alonso, Canadian GP 2007
© The Cahier Archive

An exciting and incident-packed second practice session in Montreal on Friday afternoon confirmed that the McLaren-Mercedes team is still ahead of the game at the moment, thwarting hopes of a Ferrari comeback after the humbling the team suffered in Monte Carlo. On this occasion, however, Fernando Alonso seemed to have the advantage over team-mate Lewis Hamilton. The young Briton tried several times to dislodge Alonso from the top of the timesheets but mistakes meant that he ended the session in third place, behind the Ferrari of Felipe Massa, which was half a second down on Alonso's best and only two-tenths ahead of Hamilton. Kimi Raikkonen's difficult season continued with the Finn having a number of off-track moments as he pushed the Italian car to the limit. He ended up fourth.

With McLaren and Ferrari once again ahead of the rest it was left to Nick Heidfeld to lead the challengers, and he achieved this despite bouncing off a wall at the final corner. Despite this setback Nick stayed ahead of the impressive Nico Rosberg's Williams and the much-improved Honda of Rubens Barrichello. The top 10 was completed by Giancarlo Fisichella, Mark Webber and Takuma Sato.

David Coulthard scrambled to 11th at the end of the session ahead of Robert Kubica, who compromised his session, by bouncing off a wall early on. Then came Jenson Button in the second Honda and Tonio Liuzzi's Toro Rosso, which had been a pacesetter for much of the session but never made it out of the pits in the final few minutes and so slipped away down the order.

Anthony Davidson was next which put his ahead of Scott Speed, who ended the session frustrated when he ran into the back of Mark Webber as he tried to go for a final flying lap. Alexander Wurz was next and then came the two Toyotas, although neither Jarno Trulli nor Ralf Schumacher were happy with a series of incidents which saw Trulli TWICE drive back to the pits on three wheels, both times with a broken right front suspension: once after hitting a wall and once when his front suspension broke on one of the kerbs. Ralf had his moments too but avoided hitting anything solid. He was simply slow.

Down at the back as usual were the two Spykers: Adrian Sutil giving himself a fright at one point when he flew over the kerb at the final corner and yet somehow managed to avoid hitting the wall at the exit.

Right at the back was the wretched Heikki Kovalainen, who ran into the wall at high speed early on and had to sit out most of the session.