Lewis Hamilton claimed pole position with a scintillating Canadian Grand Prix qualifying performance on Saturday.

The world championship leader took his first ever pole in Montreal last year and he was even more impressive this time around, clocking a time over six-tenths of a second faster than that of his nearest rival.

It took some last-gasp dramatics though. Hamilton pulled out all the stops on his final lap to push BMW's Pole Robert Kubica back into second place.

In bright sunshine and poor track conditions, Kubica just could not quite do enough to deny the 23-year-old Briton his eighth career pole position and his second this season.

Hamilton won from the front in Canada last year and after his electric final qualifying lap of 1:17.886, he will be confident of a repeat come Sunday's race on the tricky, high-speed Circuit Gilles Villeneuve.

Fernando Alonso will start third on the grid for Renault and will be joined on the second row by Ferrari's Finnish world champion Kimi Raikkonen.

Nico Rosberg achieved an excellent fifth for Williams with Brazilian Felipe Massa having to settle for sixth in the second Ferrari.

Hamilton's Finnish teammate Heikki Kovalainen will start seventh, just ahead of BMW's Nick Heidfeld and Honda's Rubens Barrichello who were eighth and ninth respectively.

Hamilton set the fastest time in a fairly uneventful first mini-session, just ahead of Massa and Kovalainen. The initial qualifying period saw the elimination of Frenchman Sebastien Bourdais, the Scuderia Toro Rosso driver will start from 16th on the grid.

Also knocked out of contention were the Force India pair of German Adrian Sutil and Italian Giancarlo Fisichella who will start 17th and 18th respectively.

Honda's Jenson Button suffered a gearbox failure and did not record a single lap. The Englishman will share the back row of the grid with Sebastian Vettel, the second Toro Rosso driver.

The young German did not take part in qualifying after damaging his car in the final free practice session. Hamilton was fastest once again in mini-session two, marginally quicker than Massa.

This time Renault's Brazilian driver Nelson Piquet, Toyota's Jarno Trulli and Red Bull's David Coulthard were the first to be eliminated and will start from 15th, 14th and 13th respectively.

The other two drivers not to make the top ten shoot out were Japanese Williams driver Kazuki Nakajima and Toyota's German Timo Glock, who will take positions 12th and 11th on the grid.

Australian Red Bull driver Mark Webber made it through to the final qualifying stage but crashed into a wall after a spin the end of the session - he had to settle for 10th on the grid.

AFP

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