Hamilton fends off Ferraris to set pace

Ferrari had appeared poised to again dominate the hour-long session at Magny-Cours, with Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonen holding a convincing cushion over Hamilton until the current championship leader set the fastest time of the weekend to date.

The 22-year-old, who leads McLaren team-mate Fernando Alonso by 10 points in the title race after back-to-back wins in Canada and the United States, set a time of one minute 14.843secs for the 4.411km track.

Massa had to settle for second quickest on this occasion, just 0.063secs down, while Raikkonen was over four tenths of a second adrift of the young Briton in third.

There was not such good news for Alonso, whose car spent most of the hour in the garage as mechanics had to replace the brake- sensor system.

It was not until the dying minutes that the double world champion was finally able to get out on track, completing a mere four laps and setting the eighth-fastest time with a 1:15.742.

The Renaults of Heikki Kovalainen and Giancarlo Fisichella were fourth and fifth fastest, followed by BMW Sauber's Robert Kubica and the Williams of Nico Rosberg.

Behind Alonso, Jarno Trulli for Toyota and Red Bull Racing's David Coulthard completed the top 10, with Jenson Button 12th for Honda and Anthony Davidson 13th for Super Aguri.

It was Davidson that inadvertently caused a seven-minute delay to the session when his car ran over the run off area of the final chicane shortly before the start-finish straight.

A piece of matting shot up as the right-rear tYre of the Super Aguri rode over it. That led to a significant portion of the matting being cut away by marshals, supervised by race directors Charlie Whiting and Herbie Blasch.