Montmelo, 25th April

One week after a four day test session at the Circuit de Catalunya, Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro were back in action along with the other ten teams, as practice began for Sunday's Spanish Grand Prix, Round 4 of the Formula 1 World Championship.

In the morning, Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa were first and second respectively, the Brazilian surviving two "interesting" spins along the way. At the end of the second ninety minute session, the Finn maintained his place at the top of the time sheet, while the Brazilian ended the day fifth fastest. Second fastest was Nelson Piquet Jnr in the Renault ahead of double world champion and team-mate Fernando Alonso. Fourth place went to the Williams-Toyota of Kazuki Nakajima. Rounding off the top six behind Massa was Mark Webber in the Red Bull-Renault.


Kimi completed a total of 55 laps today, while Felipe did 41, on a day when the air temperature was in the mid-twenties, the sun was shining and the wind, often a problem at this track, did not cause too many problems. It is a common question as to why the teams still feel the need to run many laps on Friday, so soon after a four day test. While it is true that maybe drivers do slightly less distance than usual - Felipe's low number of laps in the morning was due to him not wanting to use a new set of tyres after his spin - the circuit conditions change rapidly here, so results from a test often only serve as a baseline. From that starting point, drivers still need to put their cars out on track, to evaluate grip levels, wind conditions and so on. The aim is to fine tune the car, moving forward in performance and consistency terms from the work done at the test session. Kimi had a further reason to do a few more laps in that, as he explained yesterday, he never really got a chance to try the new "nose with the hole" at the test, as the one day he was running on track, the rain washed out any meaningful testing on dry weather tyres.