Raikkonen predicts close battle in Bahrain

The Ferrari driver, who lost the lead of the championship to McLaren rival Fernando Alonso in Malaysia last Sunday, dominated today's practice sessions in Bahrain, although he was just 0.013 seconds ahead of Alonso's teammate Lewis Hamilton in the afternoon.

"I think it is going to be very close fight between both of the teams, and BMW looks quite fast," Raikkonen told reporters after practice.

"But it is too early to say what the others teams did. So we will see tomorrow."

Raikkonen, using a new engine this weekend, was pleased with his day's work despite some handling problems with his car.

"It was okay in the end, I think," he said. "It was quite difficult in the middle of the day with the handling of the car, but we improved it with some more laps and I was pretty happy in the end."

Teammate Felipe Massa was also happy with his day's work after posting the fourth fastest time.

"I am pretty happy with the handling of the car, which has allowed me to be very consistent in terms of performance over long runs," said Massa.

"We have a good point from which to work over the rest of the weekend. In particular, we have to work on improving our performance on the first lap on new tyres. It all looks very close, but we have everything we need to do well in qualifying and in the race."