2008 Testing - Raikkonen sets searing pace

Eurosport - Tue, 05 Feb 17:00:00 2008

World Champion Kimi Raikkonen continued Ferrari's domination of Formula One's Bahrain test by setting a searing pace at the Sakhir circuit for the second day in a row.

The 28-year-old Finn, who was running race simulations for most of the day, lapped over two seconds quicker than the pole position time for last year's race in a time of 1:30.595.

He was no doubt helped by conditions that were far less windy than on the opening day, but in spite of that, still looked mightily impressive during the day.

Ferrari test driver Luca Badoer ran a totally different programme, working on general development work, and ended the day 1.7 seconds slower than Raikkonen.

Toyota were in action again, and this time had both their race drivers on hand after Kamui Kobayashi had driven on day one.

It was not a good day for the Japanese-owned team as both Jarno Trulli and Timo Glock suffered gearbox problems and the Italian their fastest driver, some 2.3 seconds off the pace.

"It was a difficult day because we had a problem on the car so unfortunately I spent some time in the garage while this was fixed but that is part of testing," said Trulli.

"Obviously it wasn't ideal but we have more days here where we will work to better understand the balance and behaviour of the car. At the moment we are still in the first stages of our preparation - we have updates and more performance to come."

GP2 champion Timo Glock, who will partner Trulli this season, was fourth quickest as he evaluated some new mechanical parts while the Italian worked on set-up.

The test continues for one more day.