Hamilton expecting strong qualifying

The world champion, who posted the tenth fastest time of the day, admitted he was nonetheless pleased with the consistency of his laptimes and reckons he will have a good qualifying, especially with the help from the KERS device.

"We had a good Friday. We're not the fastest, but our long runs appear to be quite consistent," said Hamilton. "We're not as quick as the Red Bulls, but, for Brazil - where we haven't traditionally been quick - we're quite happy with the pace we have.

"In the past, we've always been quick in qualifying but not as quick in the race. KERS is worth close to four tenths in qualy and around half that in the race, so I'm optimistic for tomorrow afternoon and think the consistency we showed today will reward us in the race."

Team-mate Heikki Kovalainen was also content with his day's work despite finishing down in 17th position.

"The times may not necessarily show it, but we've made some good progress today," the Finn said. "We followed a disciplined programme, focusing on our race pace and evaluating both tyre compounds.

"Our pace on both tyres appears to be very good and we suffered very limited degradation, so I think our race pace will be good."