Kovalainen: More to come from updates

The team is running its biggest upgrade package of the season yet in Barcelona, but Kovalainen finished in 18th position in second practice, nearly four seconds off the pace.

The Finn, however, is confident the team will be able to take a step forward once it gets the new components working properly.

"Overall we can be very happy about this Friday," said Kovalainen. "I think we've seen an improvement today on where we were and throughout the sessions we could see that we were getting more and more out of the new package. The gap to the cars ahead seems reasonably small so I think it's all positive.

"The key point is that there is a lot more to come out of it. Optimising the whole update will take time and even though the car felt good on both the options and the primes we know that after going through the data tonight we can make more improvements tomorrow, and in the coming races."

Team-mate Jarno Trulli, 20th fastest, echoed Kovalainen's thoughts despite a more difficult day.

"A bit of a mixed day for me," he said. "The team made a change to my steering in the morning session which meant I couldn't complete the program in FP1 but in the afternoon session we completed a decent number of laps and I could start to feel where we have found some improvements on the car.

"For much of the day I didn't really feel like I was getting the most out of it but we have found some of the pace we want to with the updates and with more work there is clearly much more to come."