MONZA, Italy, Sept 7, 2007 (AFP) - A confident Fernando Alonso rediscovered the art of smiling on Friday when he topped the times in second practice for Sunday´s Italian Grand Prix.

But the defending double drivers´ world champion, who trails his McLaren Mercedes-Benz team-mate 22-year-old British rookie Lewis Hamilton by five points in the title race, kept his feet firmly on the ground.

"Today went really well," said the 26-year-old Spaniard.

"We had a good idea of our performance from the test last week, and although the conditions have changed slightly since then, we were able to get an understanding of the set-up for the race, and I am happy with how the car felt.

"I missed a little time in the morning session when the team were fixing a small problem with my steering, but it didn´t really make too much difference to our overall results."

Hamilton, keen to become the first man to win the title in his rookie season, said he wanted to carry on pushing to close the gap on Alonso and ensure that they both together beat the Ferraris.

Hamilton said: "We went through our usual set-up and Bridgestone Potenza tyre comparison work and now have a good understanding of our competitiveness this weekend.

"The car feels really good to drive round here, and we have already made some good steps forward today. However you never know what everyone else is doing, so we will be looking for further improvements before qualifying tomorrow."

Alonso bounced back to form by clocking a best lap of one minute and 22.386 seconds around the old Autodromo Nazionale in Monza´s old royal parks, one-eighth of a second faster than Hamilton.

Italian Giancarlo Fisichella in a Renault gave home fans some satisfaction by clocking the third best time ahead of Poland´s Robert Kubica in a BMW Sauber and German Nico Rosberg in a Williams.

For the Ferrari fans, it was a disappointing afternoon as they failed to fight for the top times in the warm sunshine and Brazilian Felipe Massa was sixth and Finland´s Kimi Raikkonen eighth. They sandwiched German Nick Heidfeld who was seventh in the second BMW.

The session was run in perfect dry conditions under a blue sky and was interrupted midway through when Briton Anthony Davidson stopped out on the track in his Super Aguri.

This produced a red flag and a brief break either side of which Massa provided some thrills by spinning in his efforts to improve his Ferrari´s times.

Massa said: "We tackled the two free sessions in a different way, working mainly on race pace in the afternoon. We still have work to do on the car set-up to find the best balance on a single lap, but on a long run, I would say we are in reasonably good shape."

Raikkonen said: "The first session went well, but in the second I lost a lot of time with a hydraulics problem. I managed to do only one run of laps on new tyres in the final minutes.

"We don´t have much of a reference point on where we actually are - but the balance of the car is not bad, especially for qualifying."