Happy Raikkonen Remains Cautious

Formula One 'Iceman' Kimi Raikkonen raised struggling McLaren's spirits with the fastest time in practice for Sunday's European Grand Prix.

The 23-year-old Finn has scored just one point in six races so far this season but his lap of 1:29.355 in Friday's second one-hour session was a boost for engine partners Mercedes in front of their home crowd.

Raikkonen, last year's Championship runner-up, holds the Nurburgring's race lap record and also took the first pole position of his Formula One career in the Eifel mountains last year with a time of 1:31.523.

His lead in that race was ended when his engine blew and he has finished only twice so far in 2004 after being plagued by further failures.

"A good start to the weekend but there is still a long time to go," said Raikkonen. "As always we will do our best and hopefully continue to make some progress. We completed our planned programme and experienced no problems, which is encouraging.

"The car seems to behave well here, but it's tomorrow that really matters and we will see where we end up."

Raikkonen's Scottish teammate David Coulthard was fourth on the timesheets in a second session dominated by teams with Michelin tyres.

"Obviously it doesn't look too bad for us today despite only running a limited number of laps," he said. "We completed our tyre evaluation programme and found a reasonable basic set up, so our pace seems quite encouraging."