Friday: Today, Kimi continues with his tests:
Raikkonen finishes Ricard test on top
Today’s times:
Pos Driver Team Time Laps
1. Raikkonen Ferrari (B) 1:28.624 101
2. Fisichella Renault (B) 1:28.641 111
3. de la Rosa McLaren-Mercedes (B) 1:29.249 78
4. Montagny Toyota (B) 1:29.312 79
5. Nakajima Williams-Toyota (B) 1:29.631 100
6. Coulthard Red Bull-Renault (B) 1:29.834 77
7. Rossiter Super Aguri-Honda (B) 1:29.869 131
8. Sutil Spyker-Ferrari (B) 1:29.869 83
9. Heidfeld BMW-Sauber (B) 1:29.978 118
10. Button Honda (B) 1:29.989 100
11. Liuzzi Toro Rosso-Ferrari (B) 1:29.993 56
The reason the teams are all heading off to the Ricard circuit is that the French circuit offers the possibility of simulating a variety of track characteristics. The first two days of the test will see cars run on a track layout that replicates some of the slow speed characteristics of Monaco, while the second two days sees Monaco translate to the very fast low downforce requirements of Montreal, just by changing the layout. Kimi will be testing on the Montreal layout.
The laptimes this morning:
1 RAI 1’28.832 50
2 DLR 1’29.249 38
3 LIU 1’29.993 30
4 BUT 1’30.015 56
5 ROS 1’30.046 67
6 HEI 1’30.601 52
7 FIS 1’30.728 54
8 COU 1’30.824 41
9 MOT 1’31.024 41
10 NAK 1’31.224 50
11 SUT 1’33.182 32
Kimi has covered more laps today so far than all of yesterday’s due to some problems. And strangely, he has only improved his time by 0.001 of a second hehe…
News:
F1 to move to V6, 2.2 Litre 10,000rpm engines?! 
Thursday: So, our Kimi is back to work today. The test finishes on Friday at this circuit. Kimi has some new additions on the car, such as the rear wing and front wheel brake dishes.
Check the photo album for non-watermarked pictures.
Raikkonen leads the way at Paul Ricard
Kimi Raikkonen posted the fastest time on the penultimate day of this week’s testing at Paul Ricard, where teams worked on their preparations for the Canadian Grand Prix.
The circuit was changed from the Monaco to the Montreal-style configuration for today’s test, with long straights and tight corners over the 5.2-km 1E layout.
Raikkonen, looking at putting the disappointment of his Spanish GP retirement behind him, took over from teammate Felipe Massa and went quickest with a best lap of 1:28.833 on a day with dark skies threatening rain, which hit the track after lunch and caused a slight delay to the programmes.
The Finnish driver, whose running was limited after being hit by an electronics problem in the morning, finished ahead of a surprising Scott Speed, who made good use of the Ferrari power in his Toro Rosso car to finish only two tenths of a second behind Raikkonen.
Today’s times:
Pos Driver Team Time Laps
1. Raikkonen Ferrari (B) 1:28.833 50
2. Speed Toro Rosso-Ferrari (B) 1:29.039 94
3. Kovalainen Renault (B) 1:29.070 89
4. Kubica BMW-Sauber (B) 1:29.157 83
5. Webber Red Bull-Renault (B) 1:29.179 84
6. Montagny Toyota (B) 1:29.205 66
7. Wurz Williams-Toyota (B) 1:29.359 57
8. de la Rosa McLaren-Mercedes (B) 1:29.528 95
9. Barrichello Honda (B) 1:30.108 71
10. Rossiter Super Aguri-Honda (B) 1:30.235 25
11. Klien Honda (B) 1:30.286 113
12. Albers Spyker-Ferrari (B) 1:32.245 16
13. Winkelhock Spyker-Ferrari (B) 1:32.756 43
Okay then, a little electrical problem in testing, but that’s fine. Testing is to try things and especially put them on limit. Kimi and his mechanics will be focusing on improving the car for Kimi’s set up still, whereas reliability is the overall focus for the championship. They clearly have the speed and we all know Kimi is as fast as lightening, even in an unreliable car (2003 and 2005, actually, all of his McLaren seasons) its just about gelling in nicely with this new car. He’ll come around, or should I say the car will? Bit of both I guess. Good luck for the last test tomorrow Kimi 🙂
Taken from Ted’s Barcelona notebook, Kravitz (ITV Pitlane reporter) is also another on Kimi’s side:
Michael Schumacher
For Michael to say that his presence at the Spanish Grand Prix was not a distraction for the Scuderia Ferrari is to re-define the word distraction.
Michael turned up in the Ferrari garage on Friday morning at 10:55am – just over halfway through the first practice session.
He greeted the team photographer and embraced Ferrari’s press officer, before instinctively going over to his side of the garage.
There were his guys – his mechanics, in their usual places, working on their car. The guys stopped what they were doing, hugged Michael and smiled their hellos.
It was all very touching, except it wasn’t his side of the garage, it is Kimi Raikkonen’s side of the garage. And they weren’t his mechanics; they are Kimi’s mechanics. Kimi sat in the car, pretending not to notice.
I don’t blame Kimi at all for leaving the track as soon as he could. The post-race celebrations with Michael, Felipe, Jean Todt and the rest would have turned his stomach.
Nobody could’ve foreseen his electrical failure, and Michael knows what it is like to lose a championship through unreliability, but Spain was the second mechanical hit Kimi’s had to take after being rev-limited by an overheated engine in Malaysia.
That is not what Raikkonen signed up for.
Taken from an interview with Chris Dyer, Kimi’s race engineer (Michael Schumacher’s ex race engineer) by autosport.com’s Mark Glendenning
‘The new toy’ has now been entrusted to Raikkonen. The Finn arrived at Ferrari having amassed a lot of experience and reasonable degree of success at McLaren, but Dyer said that adapting to Kimi was still very much a plunge into the unknown.
"The first day Kimi drove the car, it was very clear for me, and for the other people who are working with him, that he is a very, very different driver," he remarked.
"Not just from Michael, but from anybody we’ve had. And I don’t mean that Kimi doesn’t talk, Kimi doesn’t smile! I mean the way he drives the car is very different. Just the way he uses the car, the way he uses the steering wheel, the way he uses the throttle, the way he uses the brake, is completely different to anything we have had before.
This, Dyer says, forced him to unlearn some old habits. "You get used to a certain way of working, and all of a sudden you are given something completely different," he said. "And to be honest, the first thing for us is really to step back and let Kimi do what he wants to do. We can’t react to every problem with, ‘this is what Michael would have done’. You can’t do that. He’s not Michael, he’s different. Not just in personality, I mean, the way he drives the car is very different.
"It’s very much a two-way street, because not only has he had to learn the way that we work, but we have to learn the way that he works, and we have to learn how he wants to drive the car, how he needs the car, and what we have to do to make him fast. So that has been a continual process.
"We had to adapt the car to him, which I think is a very important first step. We have to make him comfortable, and we have to make him happy, and then perhaps in the future if there are particular problems that we need to deal with, maybe then we can start to introduce more of our philosophy and our way of working."
FUCK ISRAEL 