Kimi Raikkonen insists Lotus reliability not a worry as F1 test ends

The Finn had already missed the third day of the Barcelona test due to illness and was replaced in the E21 by reserve driver Davide Valsecchi and Romain Grosjean.

And he completed just seven laps during Sunday morning's running as the team investigated a problem with the gearbox and then opted to change it.

When asked by AUTOSPORT whether he was worried about the possibility of unreliability derailing a potential title campaign, Raikkonen said: "Not really.

"The few times that problems have cost us many hours, it's always been the same thing. And we don't expect it to happen when it's warmer.

"When you have these problems, you can never be 100 per cent that it won't happen again.

"But we had some problems in testing last year and then found the racing was OK. I think it will be the same story again."

Lotus technical director James Allison said that despite the loss of track time, Raikkonen's afternoon, which revolved around a number of four to seven lap stints on medium and soft tyres, had given the team reason to be optimistic for the season-opening Australian Grand Prix.

"Today was something like this entire test in microcosm; we spent too much of the day in the garage, but when we did get out on track we made good progress.

"A definite positive is that we are not finding it difficult to be on the pace, and we haven't had to resort to low-fuel runs at any of the tests to get a good time out of the car."

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