Hamilton grabs second straight pole

The Briton, who won from pole in Canada last Sunday, beat teammate Fernando Alonso as McLaren secured their third consecutive front row lockout.

Hamilton's time of 1:12.331 was nearly two tenths of a second faster than Alonso, with Ferrari's Felipe Massa down in third place ahead of teammate Kimi Raikkonen, who was over half a second slower than Hamilton.

BMW Sauber's Nick Heidfeld completed the top five in front of Renault's Heikki Kovalainen, who put on his strongest qualifying performance to keep his momentum going following his fourth place in Montreal.

Formula One debutant Sebastian Vettel continued with his impressive debut weekend by qualifying in the top ten with his BMW Sauber, the German winding up seventh, ahead of Jarno Trulli, Mark Webber and Giancarlo Fisichella, the Italian completing the top ten.

Red Bull's David Coulthard will start from 11th position and will be able to choose his fuel strategy freely after missing the second cut by less than a tenth of a second.

The Scot will start in front of Toyota's Ralf Schumacher, who put on his strongest qualifying performance since Malaysia, the German returning to the top 16 for the first time in four races.

Honda duo Jenson Button and Rubens Barrichello were again unable to qualify for the final shootout, the Briton ending up as 13th quickest, two places ahead of his Brazilian teammate. The Honda drivers were split by Williams' Nico Rosberg, unable to make it into the top ten for the first time in three races.

Anthony Davidson had to settle for 16th place after having made the first cut with his Super Aguri.

The first segment of qualifying saw the elimination of Williams' Alexander Wurz, who missed the first cut for the second race in a row after struggling with balance issues, Takuma Sato in the Super Aguri and both the Toro Rosso and Spyker drivers.

Sato, who had scored Super Aguri's best result with a sixth place in Canada, blamed traffic in both his runs for missing the cut.

Toro Rosso's Tonio Liuzzi finished ahead of teammate Scott Speed, who endured a disappointing qualifying for his home race, posting the 20th fastest time. German Adrian Sutil outqualified Spyker teammate Christijan Albers for the sixth time this season - the fifth time in a row - as the Dutch squad had to make do with the final row of the grid.

The first qualifying session was almost trouble-free, with the most significant incident being an off-track excursion from Coulthard, who went off after outbraking himself at Turn 8.