Once again, and this time at Spa, Scuderia Ferrari were running their day on two fronts as on the one hand there was Kimi Raikkonen (bottom) setting the third fastest time of the day while on the other Luca Badoer (top and middle) was again at the tail end of the field.

After the heat and humidity of Valencia and the rather bland nature of the track, in every sense of the word, the start of today’s free practice was a breath of fresh air, as drivers set out to tackle this beautiful Spa-Francorchamps road circuit. And to reinforce the stereotypical expectations at this track, the morning session was pretty much washed out by rain with Kimi Raikkonen only completing 16 laps, four less than his Scuderia Ferrari team-mate, Luca Badoer.

The afternoon was dry and both drivers were able to make progress with the day’s programme, Raikkonen completing 26 laps on his way to third fastest and Luca doing 30, ending the day in twentieth place. The Finn looks very competitive at this track where he has a triplet of wins to his name, while although Badoer is again last, his times are improving and he actually looked well on the pace when the track was wet. The forecast for the rest of the weekend however, is for dry conditions.

McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton was fastest after the three hours of free practice, with Timo Glock his closest pursuer in the Toyota. Behind Raikkonen, Mark Webber was fourth fastest for Red Bull-Renault, with Romain Grosjean fifth for Renault in his second ever F1 weekend. Giancarlo Fisichella was a surprising sixth for Force India.

“The results of free practice always have to be looked at with a pinch of salt, as we don’t know what programmes the other teams are running,” said Stefano Domenicali. “For our part, we can be satisfied with the performance of the F60, which showed itself to be competitive both in the dry and in the wet. Kimi was very quick and I think that he can be a major player this weekend. Furthermore, we have seen how close it is, with nineteen drivers all within just over one second of one another: clearly, all you need is to have around ten litres of fuel more or less on board to change the look of the time sheet. In twentieth place, Luca has made a step forward compared to Valencia, showing that what he needs most is to do more kilometres on track. This morning’s rain definitely did not help him, even if he was more competitive in these conditions than in the afternoon. We expect to see him continue to improve throughout the weekend.”

Luca Badoer: “In the wet this morning I was reasonably happy with my performance, even if I would have preferred to have run all the time in the dry, to increase my understanding of the car. In the afternoon, we made some modifications to the set-up, but I still haven’t managed to find the ideal settings for my driving style and so, I didn’t have the right feel for the car to attack all the corners. We still have a session available to us to work on the car tomorrow morning. My aim for qualifying is very simple: to make the cut at the end of Q1.”

Kimi Raikkonen: “I am pleased with the work we have done today and the overall feeling is a positive one. The car seems to be quick, even though we know it’s only Friday and therefore we cannot be entirely sure where we are compared to the others. We had a few technical problems, although they didn’t have a significant effect on the way we got through our planned programme for the day.”

Chris Dyer: “The changing weather conditions, typical of this Grand Prix, meant we were able to test for a long time in the rain and I have to say that both drivers reckoned they were pleased with the performance of their cars in the wet and were competitive compared to the others. In the afternoon, we had a few niggles with both cars (a failure in the hydraulic system meant Kimi couldn’t get back to the pits at the end of the second session) which did not really affect our programme. Kimi proved to be very quick: now we will analyse the data to decide in which direction we should go with the car in order to improve still further the performance of his F60. Luca continued to gain experience with the car and we hope he can also improve his performance bit by bit, as he gets more mileage under his belt.”

First Session

K. Raikkonen: 7th 1.52.930 16 laps 279 chassis
L. Badoer: 10th 1.55.068 20 laps 280 chassis

Second Session

K. Raikkonen: 3rd 1.47.285 26 laps 279 chassis
L. Badoer: 20th 1.49.211 30 laps 280 chassis

Weather

First session: air 19/16 °C, track 20/18 °C; overcast, occasional rain. Second session: air 19/20 °C, track 26/29 °C; sunny.