Formula One news

Hamilton snatches maiden pole

Heikki Kovalainen provided entertainment in the first session as his day went from bad to worse. After an engine failure in the morning practice Kovalainen lost the rear of his Renault and slapped the wall, hard at turn four, prompting the session to be halted. He would end the session nineteenth and dropped out of the first session along with Davidson, Ralf Schumacher, Wurz, Sutil and Albers.

The second session claimed the scalps of Takuma Sato in a strong eleventh, Liuzzi an equally impressive twelfth, Barrichello, Coulthard, Button and Speed.

In the pole shoot out Hamilton idled at the pit lane exit eager to get out first, but a cheeky Kimi Raikkonen blasted past the McLaren driver before they reached the first corner. Fernando Alonso was busy saving fuel a little way down the road but showed fearsome pace on his first flying lap to set the pole marker time of 1m16.163s ahead of Hamilton and Raikkonen.

With three minutes to go the field pitted for fresh tyres and prepared for a second and final assault on pole. Hamilton fought back with a 1m15.707s lap but Alonso was still on a charge going faster in the first two sectors, but made a mistake in the final chicane costing him over 0.6s and the lead.

Hamilton therefore took his maiden F1 pole position from team mate Fernando Alonso. Nick Heidfeld pulled a strong lap out of the bag in the final moments to qualify his BMW third ahead of the two Ferraris of Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa.

Mark Webber confirmed his much improved pace in Canada all weekend with sixth place on the grid ahead of Rosberg, Kubica, Fisichella and Trulli rounding off the top ten.

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