UpdateF1 >> Formula 1 News > Practice one: Raikkonen returns

Ferrari top Mclaren

Ferrari, and Kimi Raikkonen, came away from the Silverstone test brimful of confidence that they had found the groove, that they would be taking the fight to Mclaren in France and Great Britain. If this session is any indicator, they were absolutely right.

Nigel Roebuck, in his weekly ‘Ask Nigel’ column on Autosport.com, commented this week that he kept expecting the ‘real’ Kimi Raikkonen to appear at each race, only to be repeatedly disappointed. I share his view, and believe he will be as heartened as many at the Kimi we saw this morning.

Raikkonen, from the off, was on fire, and it was odd to see Felipe Massa playing catch-up in the red cars. Absolutely blistering in the second and third sectors of the circuit, this was Raikkonen at his best, completely at one with the machine and banging in fast laps every time out. His time of 1:15.382 - just five one-thousandths of a second slower than the outright lap record – kept him top of the time sheets as Massa chipped away endlessly, the Brazilian eventually getting to within a tenth of his team mate. One felt, however, that Raikkonen has more to come.

Mclaren expected Ferrari resurgence here, and one hopes they are sandbagging as the best Fernando Alonso could muster was a 1:16.154, some seven tenths slower than Raikkonen. Lewis Hamilton suffered a mechanical fault as he went out for the first time, and missed half the session. He finished the day in sixth, albeit just a tenth down on Alonso.

Between the two Mclarens we might have expected – on past form – the BMW-Saubers, but here we have two surprise packages.

In fourth place, and possibly the more promising of the two, is Nico Rosberg, the on-form German setting a number of quick laps on his way to a 1:16.214 in the Williams FW29-Toyota. Proof that the car is good here comes in the shape of Alex Wurz just a couple of tenths slower than Rosberg.

David Coulthard popped into fifth place late in the session in the Red Bull, a promising performance not echoed by team mate Mark Webber who finished the day with only the two Spykers behind him.

The BMW pair came home in seventh and ninth, Robert Kubica making a welcome return to the cockpit having missed only one race as a result of his astonishing 75g crash in Canada, and the final top ten place went to Jarno Trulli, the Italian clearly concentrating on long runs.

Honda’s promised improvement was far from evident here with Jenson Button and Barrichello in 13th and 14th, mixing it again with the Super Aguri’s who had Takuma Sato finish 12th and Anthony Davidson 16th, and Toro Rosso seemed to have made some progress with Tonio Liuzzi 11th and Scott Speed 15th.

Ralf Schumacher did his thing, as usual, and wound up 17th, and home team Renault must have been taking things easy to set only 18th and 19th best times with Giancarlo Fisichella and Heikki Kovalainen.

Of the Spyker pair, Christijan Albers got the better of Adrian Sutil this morning.

Written: Fri, 29 Jun 2007 10:02:22