Hamilton in right mood to frustrate Ferrari pair

Felipe Massa and Fernando Alonso set the pace in the two practice sessions held yesterday for tomorrow's Belgian Grand Prix. But the championship points leader, Lewis Hamilton, said he still believes that McLaren have a better package than either Ferrari or Renault and that that will continue to be the case until the end of the season.

Yesterday's sessions saw Massa and his Ferrari team-mate, Kimi Raikkonen, lap up to half a second faster than Hamilton and his McLaren team-mate, Heikki Kovalainen, in the morning, and Alonso's Renault upstage everyone, ahead of Massa, Kovalainen and Hamilton, as a light rain shower upset things midway through the afternoon.

"On tracks with long straights they [Ferrari] have a slight advantage over us," Hamilton said, "but I think it will balance out. Here they will be strong like they were last year. We have made a step forward with our car and we should be able to challenge them. Last year we weren't in a position to do so.

"I think in Monza they will probably be a lot quicker than they were last year, but I still feel we will have the upper hand.

"For Singapore, they will be very quick like they were in Valencia, so maybe they will have the upper hand there. We will wait and see, while in Fuji and Shanghai, we were very strong there.

"I honestly feel we've the better package for the remaining races. They are going to be able to challenge us, but I feel we have the upper hand."

Hamilton is only six points clear of Massa, who recently won in Valencia and should have won in Hungary until his engine failed. The latter, however, is cautious about his prospects of becoming the first Brazilian world champion since the late Ayrton Senna and also downplays suggestions that the Briton might win six or seven titles.

"That is always the mentality of the media – you need to think about the first one first, which is the most important thing for any driver," Massa said. "And when you win the first, you think about the second. That is the right direction to think about it – and I am talking about what is right for me – which is probably the same way what Lewis thinks."

Meanwhile, Raikkonen could match the great Jim Clark's record of four wins on the trot here if he gets it together tomorrow. He has not won since Spain in May, and victory could be the key to retaining his crown. The Finn admits that both he and Ferrari have been working very hard, especially at the recent Monza test, to get around the problem of generating sufficient heat in the Bridgestone tyres during qualifying laps.

"Spa has been a good place, so I hope for this year also that will be the case," he said. "Definitely the season hasn't been what we wanted – there has been a problem. It is not the first time, and it is not the end of the life, so we try to fix it. Hopefully, we have found something and we get back where we should be. But sometimes things go wrong. Hopefully we can have a stronger race."

Expanding a little on that theme, he added, in reference to the Monza test: "We tried many things, and I was pretty happy with the car, but you never know. We have had a good test before and then different conditions at the next race and can't get back to where it was. But we had a good feeling from the Monza test, and we will see now."

Having run second to Massa in the morning session yesterday, Raikkonen was one of the drivers caught out in the afternoon's rain shower as he spun his Ferrari into a tyre wall and damaged its rear wing. He ended the day fifth fastest.

Three questions for Kimi Raikkonen

1. Is the famous Eau Rouge corner at Belgium's Spa-Francorchamps circuit your favourite corner in F1?

Eau Rouge is not really a corner any more, it's more of a straight. It is still quite exciting, but it was more challenging in the past because now the smaller-engined cars don't go so fast through there. It is easy in the dry.

2. What's on your iPod?

Mostly Finnish music, all sorts of it, but I'm sure you wouldn't know what any of it is!

3. What would you be if you weren't an F1 driver?

In some other type of motor sport – probably rallying. It would be something to do with motor sport because that has always been a part of my life.

David Tremayne

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