Planet-F1

Kimi: Still room for improvement

Thursday 14th February 2008

Despite dominating the recent tests in Bahrain, Kimi Raikkonen reckons Ferrari's F2008 still has room for improvement.

Ferrari joined Toyota for six days of testing at Bahrain over the past two weeks, where the Scuderia's F2008 claimed a clean-sweep of the timesheets.

Raikkonen also set a blistering pace at the Sakhir circuit, lapping more than two seconds faster than last year's pole position time for the Bahrain GP.

But despite an impressive showing, Raikkonen believes the F2008 still needs to improve further before the season starts in mid-March.

"This session has also shown problems - small ones - with the F2008. We wanted to get to know the car better, and so we did," he told the Gazzetta dello Sport newspaper.

"There have already been improvements. Obviously reliability hasn't come automatically, but two or three lap times have already been interesting."

Outlining Ferrari's plans for improvement, the reigning F1 World Champion revealed that the Scuderia will be testing new aerodynamic parts in the remaining tests before the start of the season.

"We've improved in many areas, now we look forward to the new aerodynamics we'll try out in the Montmelo test. There we will go against our rivals and we'll know where we stand.

"The decisive step is the next test. And then Melbourne, because only at the first GP we'll know how the teams compare."