The Finn took to the track in very cold and foggy conditions early in the morning, before going on to complete a total of 55 laps during the course of the day.
Raikkonen set a best time of 1:00.897 on standard rain tyres and was pleased with the first impressions.
"The first impressions of the new car were very positive," said Raikkonen. "I don’t think we have to make any improvements at the moment.
"There were some problems today and we still don’t have the final tyres; but the impression was really fine. Next week we have further possibilities to see how the car behaves."
He added: "I don’t have many points of reference. I can only compare it to the last car. I did a test without traction control before Christmas and I have to say that first of all you have to drive very cautiously and consider that a car with traction control is fast and might respond a little bit faster.
"Surely the first impression is really positive and you can handle the car even without the traction control. The weather could have been better today, but it is really nice to drive this single-seater."
Nice to see those slides! Kimi didn’t want to stop working
yesterday. After 5pm, he asked the
team to go out on track again to only set his best time of the day.
”I’m happy, everything ok. No problem of any sort, not for the car, not for me, I’m not even a bit tired.”
”I didn’t notice any substantial difference with the higher driver
protection, these are modifications that increase the safety but for
us, drivers, really little changes.”
”In short the first impression of the F2008 is very positive. It
seems very fast to me, like the one from last year that brought me the
title straight away….so on to the title quickly…No, jokes aside, I
couldn’t have hoped for a more positive day than this. And when it goes
like this it’s a good sign.”
”I saw things very well, in my country your
darkness is almost light for us. There will be time to prepare for the
nightrace in Singapore.”
”There is a long way to go and we try to prepare in the best of ways because we want a good start to the season.”
And it seems Kimi has a slightly altered helmet design, with more tribal, or rastafarian if you like, designs. It’s already grown on me but maybe that’s bias!
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Videos
Here’s a long video which gives a great insight of him with the team and his test with the F2008 in Fiorano:
Luca di Montezemolo and Jean Todt speak about Finnish drivers:
Download this video (15.2MB)
Kimi Leads F2008 To First Test
From Autosport.com
Ferrari’s new challenger took to the track for the first time this morning, with Kimi Raikkonen completing the first few laps at Fiorano.
The F2008, unveiled to the world yesterday at Maranello, made its track debut at 10:33 local time on a foggy Fiorano circuit.
World champion Raikkonen covered the first few laps in front of hundreds of fans, who gathered outside the track to watch the Italian team’s progress.
The team will continue testing at Fiorano during the rest of the day.
FUCK ISRAEL 