Raikkonen stays on top in Bahrain testing

The world champion was stopped by an oil leak while working on development and set-ups for the F2008, but still went quickest with a 1:30.015 lap.

His teammate Felipe Massa's attempt as a race simulation was hampered by an engine failure late in the run. He ended the test 0.175 seconds slower than Raikkonen.

The failures did not stop Ferrari outpacing Toyota - the only other team participating in the week-long Bahrain test.

But Toyota were positive about their progress after simulating a practice session, qualifying procedure and full race distance with both cars.

"It was a good day," said Jarno Trulli, who was third-fastest. "We did a lot of laps and successfully simulated a race distance without any trouble.

"We did some set-up work this morning and the lap times show we are moving forward. We still have work to do but we are definitely going in the right direction and that is very positive.

"I was pretty happy with the car today, even during the long runs. Obviously there is still room for improvement so we will study the data and push hard to improve our car."

Chief engineer Dieter Gass was also satisfied.

"It was encouraging to see the TF108 is a big improvement over the TF107 if you compare the times today with last year's race," he said.

But Trulli's teammate Timo Glock was less content with his race simulation.

"In the morning I did a qualifying run in a Formula One car for the first time in a few years, in our Q1 simulation, and that went really well," he said.

"The Q3 simulation, with a bit more fuel on board, also went well and I had good speed, but when we got to the race simulation I didn't have the ideal set-up.

"It wasn't quite what I wanted because the first few laps were good but then the handling dropped off a bit.

"However, it was a good experience for me and it will help us understand which direction to go in when it comes to setting up the car for a race distance."

Today's testing times:

Pos  Driver     Car           Time      Laps
 1.  Raikkonen  Ferrari  (B)  1:30.015  61
 2.  Massa      Ferrari  (B)  1:30.190  70
 3.  Trulli     Toyota   (B)  1:30.944  91
 4.  Glock      Toyota   (B)  1:31.213  93