Raikkonen trashes McLaren in shunt

The Finn was only on his seventh lap of the day when he lost control at La Rascasse and clipped the tyrewall with the right rear before being flicked around, wiping off the right front corner. The car then spun backwards across the track and thumped the Armco backwards.

"I was on a fast lap when I lost control of the car at La Rascasse," said Raikkonen. "The impact damaged the chassis and I was unable to do any more running today. We will be using my T-car for the rest of the weekend. Fortunately the team brought five cars, but my aim is only to use two!"

Team boss Ron Dennis, who said he expected Raikkonen to damage cars when he signed him at the end of last year, said: "Kimi's accident was unfortunate."

Raikkonen's team-mate David Coulthard, who took pole position here last year, finished the day third quickest overall.

"We focused our work on improving the balance throughout both sessions and made some progress, but we still have a little understeer which we have to get rid off," he said. "The grip level was surprisingly high considering it was the first day of running. It's difficult to see where you are compared to everybody else as all the teams are running with different fuel levels.

"On my last set of new tyres I did a messy lap but was still able to pick up 1.5 seconds, so I'm confident that considering the amount of fuel we were running I could have extracted a faster time today," he added.