Raikkonen stays cautious on Ferrari form

The Finn finished on top of the times in the afternoon session, but his time of 1:33.339 was slower than McLaren's Lewis Hamilton, who posted the fastest time of the day in the morning.

Raikkonen, looking for his third consecutive victory this weekend, admitted he was pleased with his day's work, but said it was still too early to judge his team's form.

"I am reasonably happy with today," said Raikkonen. "We have proved we are competitive in pure terms on this circuit and we will have to wait for tomorrow to understand exactly where we are compared to our main rivals.

"I think there is still room for improvement in terms of the handling of the car which is nevertheless good on both types of tyre we have here. The weather, especially the wind, made the second session a bit complicated but this problem was the same for everyone."

Felipe Massa was third fastest in the afternoon, behind Hamilton and ahead of Fernando Alonso, and the Brazilian is expecting a tight fight between Ferrari and McLaren this weekend.

"Overall, it has been quite a positive day," he said. "I think we have a competitive car. Clearly, we expect a very tight fight with our closest rivals, but we are up for it. We improved the set up of the car from the first session to the second but we still have some work to do, especially in terms of performance over the first timed lap.

"It's a shame that on my last run on new softer tyres I had a bit of traffic in the first part of my first lap which cost me time. This afternoon, the track was still slippery at first because of the rain and then the wind made it difficult to drive."