Hamilton heads McLaren fightback
World championship leader Lewis Hamilton set the fastest time in practice on Friday to take the early initiative in what looks set to be a hard-fought Japanese Grand Prix.
The morning session had been a story of Ferrari dominance as Kimi Raikkonen topped the timesheets followed by team-mate Felipe Massa, with the McLaren pair of Fernando Alonso and Hamilton over half a second off the pace.
But the rookie Brit responded in the afternoon session by setting fastest times in all three sectors around the 4.563 kilometre Fuji Speedway track as he clocked a time of one minute 18.734 seconds, nearly four tenths of a second faster than his Ferrari rival’s morning mark.
Team-mate Alonso posted a time of 1min 18.948secs to end the 90-minute session two tenths of a second behind his championship rival, while Massa claimed third but was nearly three-quarters of a second off the pace.
Jarno Trulli gave the home fans cause optimism for this weekend with a surprise fourth place in his Toyota, while Raikkonen found the going tougher as he finished fifth, nearly a second back, as all the teams again completed a healthy compliment of laps on a circuit they will race on for the first time on Sunday.
Hamilton and Alonso were out early and traded fastest laps at the start of the session with the 22-year-old eventually taking top spot ahead of the Spaniard after posting a time of 1:19.978.
Raikkonen slotted in behind Alonso but all three were outpaced by Renault duo Heikki Kovalainen and Giancarlo Fischella.
Hamilton responded with a lap of 1:19.198 to close in on Raikkonen’s morning effort with Alonso two hundredths of a second further back, while Rubens Barrichello was lucky not be taken out by Sakon Yamamoto as the Spyker driver clipped the Brazilian’s Honda when recovering from a spin.
Hamilton then lowered the bar further with what proved to be his best lap of 1:18:734 while Alonso also broke the one minute 19 seconds barrier but could not match his team-mate and Massa managed to move into third.
The Brazilian was pushing his Ferrari to the limit and ran wide on more than one occasion in a bid to extract every last ounce of speed from the car and eventually matched his morning effort.
Team-mate Raikkonen posted a lap of 1:19.714 to move up to fourth with just over 30 minutes remaining but Trulli then edged his Toyota just above the Finn shortly afterwards.
David Coulthard enjoyed a more productive afternoon after a poor morning run in finishing eighth, while Jenson Button was 14th with his Honda one and a half seconds off the pace and Anthony Davidson finished 20th.
