Kimi buoyant after positive start

Raikkonen and team-mate David Coulthard were first and fourth as the revised MP4-19B chassis continues to show promise after its terrible start to the season with the previous car.

"A positive start to the weekend," said Raikkonen. "We completed our pre-planned programme without any problems. As always we were busy evaluating tyres, and I believe we have a good picture of what we are going to do.

"The car handled well straight away which is always an advantage. However, it's early days and we need to see what happens tomorrow, but for sure it's better to be first on a Friday than 10th."

Coulthard added: "An encouraging start, but obviously we have to wait and see how the weekend develops. However, we had a good chance to evaluate the set up and tyres, so a good day's work, The past has shown that it's very difficult to overtake at this circuit, so a strong starting position is important, and I think we are going in the right direction."

Team principal Ron Dennis said: "With the Hungaroring not hosting many motorsports events it's inevitable that the first day's practice sees the lap times steadily decrease as the track gets cleaner and cleaner.

"This complicates the tyre choice process for both the engineers and the drivers. However our own running has been encouraging so far, and now that we have made our tyre choice we will concentrate on further optimising the cars."