Raikkonen upbeat on Ferrari form

"I am quite satisfied with this first day of testing," said Raikkonen, who lost the championship lead at the Monaco Grand Prix two weeks ago.

"We were always quick. The car turned out to be well balanced right from the morning and I think we can aim for the top spots over the rest of the weekend.

"From what we have seen today, there is not much difference in the performance of the two types of Bridgestone tyre we have available to us, but the track conditions are bound to change over the next couple of days.

"At this track, it is very important to have the brakes sorted in the race and we also worked on this, added the Finn, who was third quickest in the afternoon session.

Felipe Massa had a more troubled day despite topping the times in the damp conditions in the morning.

The Brazilian suffered a mechanical problem with 15 minutes of the afternoon session left, meaning he lost valuable track time.

Despite that, he was fifth fastest.

"My car seemed to suffer some sort of blackout: gradually all the systems shut down and I had to stop at the side of the track," he said. "Of course, that's not good but it's better to have a problem in free practice than in qualifying or, worse still, in the race.

"Even if we did not get through everything we wanted to do, this problem won't cost us anything. From what we could understand today, it is very close between us and our main rivals.

"As usual on a Friday in Montreal, the track was very dirty and will therefore improve bit by bit as the surface gets rubbered in. I hope I can have a great qualifying and claim a good position on the grid."