Practice 1: Alonso draws first blood

Mclaren led the way in opening practice for the Canadian Grand Prix today after Fernando Alonso topped the timesheets with a lap some two tenths faster than his team-mate Lewis Hamilton and four tenths faster than the Ferraris of Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa.

It is always notoriously difficult to gauge anything meaningful from practice alone. But a quick glance down the timesheet reveals a couple of noteworthy points.

Winners:

It is certainly a surprise to see the Mclaren’s ahead of the scarlet cars at this stage though you would have to guess that Ferrari have yet to show their true colours. While Alonso and Hamilton don’t appear to have the advantage they enjoyed at Monaco, they clearly have the pace to mount a serious challenge this weekend.

Alonso seems to have the edge on Hamilton given that the Britain was unable to go faster despite enjoying more track time than the Spaniard.

Fissichella (6th) has reinforced pre-race comments from Renault that Monaco was no fluke. Along with Webber (5th), in the ever improving Red Bull, he could pip BMW Sauber to the 'best of the rest' accolade this weekend.

Once again Super Aguri (10th and 11th) have outshone the factory Honda’s (13th and 18th) and could be in on for points come Sunday.

And Ralf Schumacher – who appears to have benefited from Toyota’s wake-up call – is my final winner after going 8th fastest almost four tenths of a second faster than his team mate Jarno Trulli.

Losers:

The Honda’s of Button and Barrichello ended the session languishing down in 13th and 18th place. Button, who took pole here in 2005, has admitted that he loves this track. But I am concerned that he is not going to find himself much higher up the grid. He is usually pretty evenly matched with Barrichello; the fact that his time was almost a second faster than the Brazilian’s, suggests to me that he wasn’t exactly sand bagging in the session.

Williams also seem to be struggling with Wurz finishing the session in 15th place.


1. ALONSO McLaren 1m17.759s
2. HAMILTON McLaren 1m17.967s
3. RAIKKONEN Ferrari 1m18.136s
4. MASSA Ferrari 1m18.167s
5. WEBBER Red Bull 1m18.301s
6. FISICHELLA Renault 1m18.620s
7. HEIDFELD BMW 1m18.634s
8. SCHUMACHER Toyota 1m18.652s
9. COULTHARD Red Bull 1m18.717s
10. DAVIDSON Super Aguri 1m18.896s
11. SATO Super Aguri 1m18.898s
12. TRULLI Toyota 1m18.925s
13. BUTTON Honda 1m18.932s
14. KOVALAINEN Renault 1m18.997s
15. WURZ Williams 1m19.189s
16. SPEED Toro Rosso 1m19.234s
17. NAKAJIMA Williams 1m19.273s
18. BARRICHELLO Honda 1m19.937s
19. LIUZZI Toro Rosso 1m20.331s
20. ALBERS Spyker 1m21.251s
21. SUTIL Spyker 1m21.630s
22. KUBICA BMW no time