Raikkonen tops test despite KERS scare

The Finn's day, however, was not without trouble, as he lost three hours due to a problem with his car's KERS cooling circuit.

The problem, however, was used by Ferrari to experiment with an emergency in case of a KERS failure.

Raikkonen ended the day just more than one tenth clear of Toyota's Jarno Trulli - pointing once again to how close the competitiveness between the teams looks.

Trulli completed a total of 149 laps over the course of the day, and was pretty happy with how much progress had been with the TF109.

"This has been a very good test for us," he explained. "I've covered well over 2000km in three days and I feel happy with the car. It seems competitive and reliable so a start like this gives us a solid base for the season ahead.

"There is still a lot of time before the first race and there is plenty of scope for teams to make big steps between now and Melbourne. So we will have to keep pushing hard to keep up the momentum in the factory and at the remaining tests. Still, so far so good."

The only other driver present was BMW Sauber's Nick Heidfeld, who spent the day concentrating on mechanical set-ups.

"Today I drove the new BMW Sauber F1.09 in warm weather conditions for the first time, so the most important thing for me was to learn more about the general balance of the car", explained Heidfeld.

"Overall it was a good day because I tried a lot of different set-up solutions. I already feel happy about how the car reacts to changes."

Today's times:

Pos  Driver        Team                      Time      Laps
 1.  Raikkonen     Ferrari              (B)  1:32.102  103
 2.  Trulli        Toyota               (B)  1:32.230  149
 3.  Heidfeld      BMW-Sauber           (B)  1:32.585  104

All Timing Unofficial