Alonso not expecting McLaren dominance

McLaren's championship leader was over half a second ahead of Ferrari rival Felipe Massa in the afternoon session.

In the morning, Alonso and teammate Lewis Hamilton finished one-two to complete a perfect start to the weekend for McLaren.

But despite his performance, Alonso is not expecting to be as dominant as in Monaco, where the Spaniard won ahead of Hamilton, with Massa over a minute behind.

"A good start to our weekend at a challenging circuit," said Alonso. "In the first session we limited our running slightly as the track was very dirty and only used one set of tyres, but still emerged fastest. The second session was spent on tyre evaluation and also looking at the brakes and we have made some good progress.

"I don't think we will dominate like we did at the last race in Monaco and the track conditions here means that it's very hard to estimate where our competition is, but so far so good."

Hamilton, running at the Gilles Villeneuve circuit for the first time today, was pleased with his day's work after posting the third quickest time in the second session.

"Today was the first time I had the opportunity to drive at the Montreal circuit and I really enjoyed myself," Hamilton said. "We had done a lot of work back in the UK with our simulation programme and also I have watched a few of the past races here but you can't beat the real thing.

"We worked on set-up, tyre evaluation and also looking at the brakes as this circuit is notoriously hard on the brakes. There were no problems and it looks like we are in good shape."