Raikkonen Aims for Front Row Start

Raikkonen, who crashed out on the final lap with suspension failure while leading the European Grand Prix at the Nurburgring last month, was fifth quickest in the afternoon at Montreal's Circuit Gilles Villeneuve.

He had been the fastest race driver in the morning session.

Raikkonen is 32 points adrift of Renault driver Fernando Alonso with 12 races remaining.

"We had a trouble free start to the weekend," said Raikkonen. "I'm still not 100 percent happy with the set-up of the car but we can work on that tomorrow morning and I'm sure we will be strong again. It's still quite bumpy out there but grip wise everything is fine.

"We are aiming to qualify on the first row and do what we can to win so we look forward to the rest of the weekend."

McLaren showed they are likely to be the team to beat this weekend, with Spaniard Pedro de la Rosa topping the times in both sessions.

Colombian Juan Pablo Montoya also had a strong day and finished as fourth quickest.

"I'm quite pleased with today's practice," said Montoya. "The car is behaving really well and it's looking pretty good. There is still some time to find in the last sector but we will work on that tomorrow morning.

"We have been evaluating our Michelin tyres and it's always difficult to make the decision as you have to look at both consistency and speed but we have some good data to work with. I think we have the pace to qualify well and finish on the podium.

"It's a lot hotter out there than normal here in Canada which makes the tyres work harder but that should hopefully be an advantage for us."