Canadian GP: Lewis Hamilton beats Nico Rosberg in practice two

Hamilton and Mercedes team-mate Nico Rosberg headed the timesheets for much of the afternoon, with the 2008 world champion fastest while the field was on the slower soft-compound Pirellis early on.

Rosberg knocked Williams driver Valtteri Bottas off top spot after 17 minutes, with Hamilton outpacing him moments later as the Silver Arrows pressed home their advantage.

Rosberg was the first frontunner to take super-softs, but he only improved on his previous best time by nine hundredths of a second, which was still enough to relegate Hamilton to second with just under 40 minutes remaining.

Hamilton's response was almost immediate as he banged in the best time in all three sectors of the circuit to retake top spot by over half a second.

Although Rosberg subsequently improved again, he ended up 0.175s off his team-mate.

"We haven't got the set-up as well as we would like, but that's great thing about all this: you're always chasing the perfect set-up," said Hamilton.

"Nico has got great pace as well, so we'll have some good data to learn from today."

Ferrari had looked set to end the session as the best of the rest, with Kimi Raikkonen shading Fernando Alonso, but Red Bull driver Sebastian Vettel left his super-soft run late.

Vettel jumped to third in the closing stages of the session, 0.455s off the pace, with Raikkonen fourth-fastest, just half a tenth quicker than his team-mate.

The Finn also suffered a spin after losing his Ferrari on the power at the exit of the hairpin while on super-softs, although this was after he had posted his quickest time.

Felipe Massa was sixth fastest ahead of Williams-Mercedes team-mate Valtteri Bottas, who was just over a tenth slower.

Kevin Magnussen and Jenson Button ended up just behind the duo, with the McLaren showing encouraging pace at a track that masks some of the shortcomings of its car.

Tenth-fastest Jean-Eric Vergne, who took to the escape road at the first chicane in the final minute of the session after locking up his brakes, was only a second off the pace, but the Frenchman had almost a 0.5s advantage over Romain Grosjean's Lotus, which was 11th.

Daniel Ricciardo was only 12th fastest after encountering some gear-change issues during the afternoon, but he was still able to outpace the two Force Indias.

Several drivers had off-track moments, with Kamui Kobayashi, who sat out the morning session to allow Alexander Rossi some mileage, spinning at Turn 2 early on.

Esteban Gutierrez also lost his Sauber at the first chicane early on and spun, while both Grosjean and Adrian Sutil missed the last corner on their first super-soft runs.

Sutil's off at the last chicane was as a result of encountering a slow-moving Magnussen, with stewards investigating the incident but opting to take no action.

Also among those to cut the final chicane were Kobayashi, Rosberg and Pastor Maldonado.

Daniil Kvyat's session ended prematurely, the Russian completing only one run of nine laps before returning to the Toro Rosso garage with a suspected fuel leak.

It was also a quiet session for Jules Bianchi, whose Marussia team had replaced a number of components at the rear of the car after he glanced the wall exiting the first chicane this morning. He hit engine problems following the completion of only three slow laps in practice two and will have a new one installed overnight.

Caterham driver Marcus Ericsson also had a disappointing afternoon, pulling off at the first chicane shortly after the half-hour mark before he had the chance to use the super-soft Pirellis.

Pos  Driver             Team/Car              Time       Gap       Laps
 1.  Lewis Hamilton     Mercedes              1m16.118s            42
 2.  Nico Rosberg       Mercedes              1m16.293s  +0.175s   39
 3.  Sebastian Vettel   Red Bull-Renault      1m16.573s  +0.455s   26
 4.  Kimi Raikkonen     Ferrari               1m16.648s  +0.530s   31
 5.  Fernando Alonso    Ferrari               1m16.701s  +0.583s   27
 6.  Felipe Massa       Williams-Mercedes     1m16.774s  +0.656s   37
 7.  Valtteri Bottas    Williams-Mercedes     1m16.893s  +0.775s   37
 8.  Kevin Magnussen    McLaren-Mercedes      1m17.052s  +0.934s   42
 9.  Jenson Button      McLaren-Mercedes      1m17.059s  +0.941s   38
10.  Jean-Eric Vergne   Toro Rosso-Renault    1m17.180s  +1.062s   40
11.  Romain Grosjean    Lotus-Renault         1m17.626s  +1.508s   28
12.  Daniel Ricciardo   Red Bull-Renault      1m17.644s  +1.526s   36
13.  Nico Hulkenberg    Force India-Mercedes  1m17.712s  +1.594s   35
14.  Sergio Perez       Force India-Mercedes  1m17.819s  +1.701s   33
15.  Pastor Maldonado   Lotus-Renault         1m17.868s  +1.750s   27
16.  Adrian Sutil       Sauber-Ferrari        1m17.964s  +1.846s   47
17.  Esteban Gutierrez  Sauber-Ferrari        1m18.340s  +2.222s   43
18.  Max Chilton        Marussia-Ferrari      1m18.693s  +2.575s   34
19.  Daniil Kvyat       Toro Rosso-Renault    1m18.732s  +2.614s   9
20.  Kamui Kobayashi    Caterham-Renault      1m20.244s  +4.126s   38
21.  Marcus Ericsson    Caterham-Renault      1m22.418s  +6.300s   13
22.  Jules Bianchi      Marussia-Ferrari      1m32.127s  +16.009s  3