Alonso on pole, Kimi goes kaput

McLaren’s Kimi Raikkonen, Alonso’s closest title rival, was third fastest but will start 13th as a penalty for an unscheduled engine change after a failure in Friday’s practice. So reigning world champion Michael Schumacher, winner in France seven times, will start directly behind Alonso in the grid.

Narain Karthikeyan was 17th, two places ahead of his Jordan teammate Tiago Monteiro who was sandwiched between the Minardis.

‘‘We can do it, I think, this weekend’’, said Alonso, winner of four races in 2005. ‘‘The car has been performing really, really well all weekend…for tomorrow I think we are all very confident.’’

It was a different story for Raikkonen. He won the Canadian Grand Prix from seventh on the starting grid but he faces a seemingly impossible task to prevent Alonso from stretching his lead in the championship. ‘‘It was not the best way to start the weekend yesterday, to blow up the engine’’, he said. ‘‘It’s going to cost us a lot this weekend.’’

The engine that failed was a new specification one for Sunday’s grand prix and McLaren replaced it with the previous version.

Renault have not won their home grand prix as a full constructor since France’s four-times champion Alain Prost triumphed in 1983 during Formula One’s turbo era.

Sunday’s race marks the halfway point in the championship, the 10th race in a season of 19 GPs. Alonso has 59 points to Raikkonen’s 37 and Schumacher’s 34.

French carmaker Renault, on home territory and with thousands of employees boosting the Magny-Cours crowd, lead McLaren and Ferrari by 13 points in the constructors’ championship.

‘‘I think Barcelona and here are the only two tracks where we see more blue than red’’, said Alonso of the flag-waving Renault fans who easily outnumbered the Ferrari faithful. (Reuters)