Magny-Cours, 20 th June 2008

For once, the Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro duo of Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa had a slightly different Friday programme to usual, although unfortunately, it was not done simply for the sake of giving them some variety, but because the Brazilian driver had a slightly stiff neck which developed in the morning. This part of the driver's body always comes under a lot of strain because of the G-forces they experience going through corners and through braking and accelerating. Therefore Felipe's day was divided into short bursts of track activity, thus leaving the long runs, necessary to analyse tyre behaviour, cooling and other factors, to his team-mate. Massa will now receive treatment from the team physio.

There was stiff competition on the track, with Fernando Alonso posting the fastest time at the end of the day, at his team Renault's home race. Felipe and Kimi took their F2008s to second and third places respectively in the afternoon, after the former had been fastest in the morning and the latter fourth. The Spaniard and the two Scuderia men were the only drivers to break the 1m 16" barrier and the top thirteen all ended up within the same second. Fourth fastest was Lewis Hamilton in the McLaren-Mercedes, ahead of the Ferrari powered Toro Rosso of Sebastian Vettel, while Canada winner Robert Kubica was sixth for BMW-Sauber. Apart from a few drops of rain several hours before the start of the first session, the day has been dry, hot and sunny and this is forecast to continue for Saturday's grid-deciding qualifying session.

At the end of the afternoon session, the FIA had organised for all drivers to try a new running regime for when the Safety Car has to be deployed during races. The plan is to avoid the situation where, through no fault of his own, a driver has to come into pit lane to refuel in order not to run out of fuel on the circuit, which so far this year could lead to a penalty if the pit lane was officially deemed to be "closed."