F1 - Raikkonen fastest on day two at Paul Ricard

Raikkonen looked strong on the Monaco-like track

Kimi Raikkonen turned the tables on McLaren to set the pace on the second day of the Paul Ricard test.

Teams concluded their development work on the shorter layout at the French circuit, which was configured to simulate Monte Carlo-type conditions ahead of next weekend’s race.

Raikkonen, outpaced by McLaren rival Lewis Hamilton on Wednesday, ended his two-day appearance at the test with a best time of 1m05.381s.

The Finn concluded his evaluation of the F2008’s high downforce package and completed 102 laps without any technical problems.

Countryman Heikki Kovalainen took over from Hamilton in the McLaren MP4-23 on the second day and was just under a tenth of a second back.

Robert Kubica was third again for BMW as the German squad tried out different aerodynamic and suspension specifications on its F1.08, which it hopes will allow it to challenge the big two in Monaco.

Red Bull’s programme was carried out by David Coulthard and the Scot ended up a strong fourth despite his RB4 running into some technical problems.

Jenson Button ended the day fifth for Honda, with his best time fractionally faster than Sebastian Bourdais in the new Toro Rosso STR3.

The honour of completing the most laps of the day went to Renault rookie Nelson Piquet Jr who lapped the 3.593km layout a mammoth 193 times, focusing on aero work in the morning.

"We got through quite a lot today and fortunately it stayed dry for most of the day, which meant I was able to complete a lot of laps,” he said.

“But it's difficult so simulate the conditions we will have in Monaco next week, and so we mainly concentrated on putting miles on the car and evaluating a couple of new developments that we have, as opposed to set-up work."

Force India was the only team to split its workload between two drivers, with Adrian Sutil sharing the duties with Giancarlo Fisichella.

Sutil finished with a best lap time fractionally faster than his experienced team-mate and the pair will also share the running again on the final day.

Friday will see the teams switch to the longer and faster configuration Paul Ricard layout to allow them to simulate conditions ahead of the Canadian GP later this month.


Testing times from Paul Ricard (Thursday 15 May)
1. RAIKKONEN Ferrari 1m05.381s
2. KOVALAINEN McLaren 1m05.471s
3. KUBICA BMW 1m05.905s
4. COULTHARD Red Bull 1m06.001s
5. BUTTON Honda 1m06.091s
6. BOURDAIS Toro Rosso 1m06.125s
7. TRULLI Toyota 1m06.205s
8. PIQUET Renault 1m06.355s
9. NAKAJIMA Williams 1m07.080s
10. SUTIL Force India 1m07.104s
11. FISICHELLA Force India 1m07.123s

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