The Canadian national newspaper, The Globe and Mail devotes five pages to wunderkind Lewis Hamilton, who has clocked five podium finishes in his first five Grand Prix. There’s no doubt who is the talking point of tomorrow’s Canadian GP.

But Hamilton has a problem. It goes back to Monaco when he seemed to be pulled back by team orders from Ron Dennis, the man who has nurtured his talent for 10 years. After the race, he spoke out perhaps more sharply than he meant to. His message? The Rubens Barrichello role is not for him. Barrichello is best remembered as Michael Schumacher’s deputy dawg at Ferrari. Despite being an excellent driver, in his native Brazil he’s regarded as a figure of fun.

Hamilton is not going down that road, “I think every weekend when I am matching Fernando’s times, if not doing better, I am demonstrating that I’ve got the ability to be a champion; to deserve at least to be equal with him. I’d hate the situation Rubens was in. If that was ever the case, I would not be here much longer.”

Some commentators are now suggesting that Ferrari’s weighty cheque book could tempt him to cross the pits to their camp. But this seems unlikely unless Dennis loses all sense of proportion and clamps down on his young protege, a move that would lose him a great deal of respect in his British heartland.

So how will Hamilton press his claims within the team? “That’s a good question,” he says. “I’ve got to remember the fact that I’m privileged to be part of such a wonderful team. I’d do anything for this team. I’ve bonded with the guys so well at testing and over the years I’ve been here. I believe I’ve got a special relationship, just because they’ve seen me grow up. They want me to win just as much I want to win for them. I don’t feel there is a need to get a special message across. They can see I’m doing a good job. I think when I do win they’ll be excited. Ron wants us both to win but two people can’t win. Monaco was just one race when it didn’t go in my favour, but in the future there will come a time when it will.”

In Friday’s practice sessions Alonso held the lead, but Hamilton pledged caution on his first attempts on this track. He’ll be faster in the race itself.

But so will the Ferrari duo on the Gilles Villeneuve circuit.

Did the new chicane make a difference to overtaking at the Spanish GP? You know it did not. But the modification to the track will sit there and grin at us from now on, having ruined a couple of fast corners without giving us anything in return. Track alterations stay, whether they achieve the desired result or not – after all, it is more important that the track designer save face than that the racing be improved at all.

So Barcelona remains the track where you overtake in the first few hundred yards or not at all. Alonso made his bid for the lead, failed and that was the end of any real fight at the front. Technically, Fernando was a little ahead at the corner and by the unwritten rules was entitled to claim the line in theory. But Massa was already committed and had nowhere to go, even had he wanted to after being criticized in the early races for not being aggressive enough. The slight bump that sent Alonso into the gravel was the risk he took and both drivers were lucky not to have suffered worse – a racing incident, indeed.

Thereafter things settled into the usual pattern of waiting for the driver ahead to run into trouble. Kimi Raikkonen duly obliged, electrical problems putting him out early and allowing Alonso back into third. Perhaps only Chris Amon can truly understand the thoughts that must be going through Kimi’s head as he wonders whether his bad luck has followed him to the ultra-reliable Ferrari team.

If we were only interested in the lead, Barcelona would have been boring indeed. But there was plenty to interest, mostly in the form of progress by some and disaster for others. David Coulthard had a great race in the Red Bull RB3, showing that it is becoming a force at last, and Super Aguri scored a point, admittedly thanks to Renault having a problem with their (French-made) fueling rig.

BMW were a little less convincing this time out, Robert Kubica coming in fourth but Heidfeld being on the receiving end of some blundering pitwork that saw a wheelnut deserting to the Toyota team. A little more Germanic efficiency required, methinks (and a rap on the knuckles for the lollipop man, no doubt).

Talking of Toyota, they joined Toro Rosso in having a truly (Trulli) dismal weekend, both cars retiring before lap 44. Not even Ralf’s optimism and Jarno’s amazing effort in putting the car into sixth in qualifying could save them this time. I have more sympathy for Scott Speed, however, who looked set to prove all his critics wrong with a tenth fastest time in practice and then a leap from last to 14th in the race, only to have a tire explode. After being robbed of the chance for a decent grid spot by engine failure in qualifying, it was Raikkonen-like luck indeed.

The interest was all in what might be coming in the future of this season. Yes, we have a battle royal for the title that should continue for a while at least, but we also have a few teams that look to be getting it together at last. Red Bull are beginning to threaten BMW’s third fastest spot and Renault are improving faster than Fisichella had predicted. Williams are a bit unpredictable but quicker than Toyota at least, while Toro Rosso show signs of real improvement. Things are tight in the midfield and could become even tighter.

And now we look ahead to Monaco, traditionally the circuit where driving skill counts for more than aerodynamics. Hamilton is confident, having raced in the principality before, Fernando and Kimi know it only too well; can this be the circuit where Massa finally convinces me?

It has been such a long break in between GPs that today’s free practice sessions are worth examining in a bit more detail than usual. And the news is that Alonso was fastest, perhaps putting an end to the silly speculation that he is under any pressure from Lewis Hamilton. The champion’s time was three tenths quicker than that of his closest challenger, Fisichella, and was set within the first half hour, whereas Giancarlo’s was a last minute effort.

On the face of it, the McLarens seem to be the cars to beat, Massa and Raikkonen finishing with the fourth and sixth fastest times respectively. But this is only practice and the real test will come tomorrow in qualifying. For much of the second session the Ferraris were clearly working on race set ups, anyway.

The pace of the Renaults (second and third fastest) tempts one to think that they have solved their problems, but both times were set right at the end of the session and were probably minimum-weight morale boosters. Much more surprising was the Toro Rosso of Scott Speed. His time was set early on but remained good enough for tenth fastest at the end, later runs being spoiled by an off course excursion. Even presuming that the car was set up for speed rather than endurance, it was an unexpected lap and might give second thoughts to those who doubt Scott’s ability.

Other than that, it was pretty much business as usual, with the BMWs being a little slower than we might have expected and the Red Bulls also disappointing somewhat. As I predicted earlier this week, the Super Aguris are losing their grip on the midfield and drifting down towards the back of the grid. But the Toyotas were awful, even their late runs failing to lift them from the company of the back markers. Everyone may have made progress over the long break but it seems some have made much less than others.

The times have to be taken with a pinch of salt, of course, and the likelihood is that qualifying will produce a very similar grid to those seen in the first three races. But, unless Ferrari were sandbagging as never before, we will not see them dominate qualifying as I was beginning to fear. On this evidence, things will remain very close up front and we could enjoy a fiercely-fought battle on Sunday.

The other day I was taking a rare break from the computer and happened to catch the MotoGP race in Shanghai. My son is an avid motorbike racing fan and I’ve picked up a bit of knowledge from him, so the names were not completely unknown to me. Rossi is the man, of course, and the Ducatis are incredibly fast this year – that much I knew.

It was a good, exciting race but what struck me most were the interviews at the end. The riders are so young! Fresh-faced innocents playing truant from school, it seemed. Okay, maybe it’s the old fogy syndrome kicking in (everyone looks young to me these days) but it does bring home the fact that you have to be a bit insane to race bikes. And the insanity of the young is the belief that they cannot die.

It might have been that I was young at the time too, but John Surtees never looked young to me. His long list of bike racing championships prove that he had the necessary streak of madness, however. Which makes his success in converting to four wheels in 1960 all the more remarkable – few bikers live up to expectations when attempting that and Rossi probably made the right decision in sticking with MotoGP rather than taking a Ferrari drive.

John is famous mainly through being the only man to be a world champion on both two wheels and four but he actually has some claim to being as quick as Jim Clark. While Jim stuck with the design skills of Colin Chapman and so always had a competitive car, John raced for a series of constructors, some good and some not so good. Yet John was always in the hunt, often extracting more from his car than it wanted to give.

In fact, Surtees was a man ahead of his time; as well as being a fast driver, he was also interested in tinkering with the car to improve it. He was, indeed, the prototype of the modern driver, being able to sense what parts of the car needed tweaking and working with the engineers to perfect it. It was entirely natural that he should progress to building his own cars in the seventies, but not before he had supplied Honda with their first ever F1 win (Mexico, 1968).

The sixties is a decade that has gone down in history as belonging to Jim Clark; quite rightly so, since he had more success than any other driver of his era. But there was one that he raced against who should stand shoulder to shoulder with him in our memories. And that man is John Surtees.