Raikkonen Fastest in Practice 4

Raikkonen, who won the last race and will go out last in qualifying, set a time of 1:26.120 to finish almost half a second clear of second-placed Jenson Button, who continued his strong form with BAR-Honda.

After cloudy skies gave way to clear blue and sunshine, raising temperatures to 29 degrees Celsius, Raikkonen proved he will be the man to beat when the heat turns up at the Istanbul Park circuit.

Championship leader Fernando Alonso, who has a 26-point advantage over his rival, displayed the potential of his Renault when he posted the third fastest time but he was half a second slower than his rival.

Juan Pablo Montoya finished fourth fastest in the second McLaren with Giancarlo Fisichella fifth in the second Renault and Takuma Sato sixth in the second BAR-Honda, making it a three-team lock-out in the top six.

Mark Webber put his Williams in seventh place with Ralf Schumacher shining for Toyota in eighth and David Coulthard, of Red Bull, and Felipe Massa, of Sauber, completing the top ten.

Montoya led the way for much of the session but Button went top with ten minutes to go then Raikkonen moved ahead by three tenths with three minutes left to run then went even faster with seconds to go.

Michael Schumacher once again pushed the limits and went off at turn eight and finished 14th fastest while both Barrichello and Trulli made mistakes at turn one and Christijan Albers went across the kerbs at turn three.

Webber was forced to return to the pits during one of his runs when he suffered a puncture, Massa went wide at turn 14, Raikkonen went off at turn eight and Christijan Albers spun his Minardi at turn 11.

Turn ten proved tricky for drivers at the end of the session and the corner caught out Fisichella, Montoya and Nick Heidfeld, of Williams, in the final 13 minutes of the session.

Pos  Driver        Team                  Time               Laps
 1.  Raikkonen     McLaren-Mercedes  (M)  1:26.120            10
 2.  Button        BAR-Honda         (M)  1:26.599  + 0.479   15
 3.  Alonso        Renault           (M)  1:26.627  + 0.507   13
 4.  Montoya       McLaren-Mercedes  (M)  1:26.748  + 0.628   11
 5.  Fisichella    Renault           (M)  1:27.240  + 1.120   15
 6.  Sato          BAR-Honda         (M)  1:27.308  + 1.188   14
 7.  Webber        Williams-BMW      (M)  1:27.335  + 1.215    7
 8.  R.Schumacher  Toyota            (M)  1:27.556  + 1.436   13
 9.  Coulthard     Red Bull-Cosworth (M)  1:27.796  + 1.676   14
10.  Massa         Sauber-Petronas   (M)  1:27.829  + 1.709    8
11.  Klien         Red Bull-Cosworth (M)  1:27.919  + 1.799   14
12.  Trulli        Toyota            (M)  1:27.921  + 1.801   15
13.  Heidfeld      Williams-BMW      (M)  1:27.951  + 1.831    9
14.  M.Schumacher  Ferrari           (B)  1:28.155  + 2.035   16
15.  Villeneuve    Sauber-Petronas   (M)  1:28.534  + 2.414   12
16.  Barrichello   Ferrari           (B)  1:28.615  + 2.495   12
17.  Monteiro      Jordan-Toyota     (B)  1:28.830  + 2.710   15
18.  Doornbos      Minardi-Cosworth  (B)  1:30.155  + 4.035   14
19.  Albers        Minardi-Cosworth  (B)  1:30.999  + 4.879   13
20.  Karthikeyan   Jordan-Toyota     (B)  No Time              3

All timing unofficial