Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsFerrari

SF15-T 'a very nice car' - Raikkonen

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Kimi Raikkonen described the Ferrari SF15-T as "a very nice car" after setting the second fastest time during the opening day of the second pre-season test.

Ferrari was either quickest or second throughout the opening test at Jerez, and followed that performance with an encouraging start at the Circuit de Catalunya on Thursday by setting the second quickest time on medium tyres. Raikkonen - who is again driving on Friday - still refuses to be drawn in to comparisons but is happy with the way car development is going.

“It’s not that different from Jerez, we don’t know about the fuel other cars had, and some of them were on soft tyres," Raikkonen said. "We keep doing our stuff, have made our plan and try to follow it. The car is a completely different story from last year’s, we’ve still got a long way ahead of us but the team is working well and has produced a very nice car.”

Technical director James Allison saw encouraging signs from the car in terms of set-up, but wants more running across the final three days.

“Overall we are content with the [first] day, happy because the work we’ve been doing in learning how the car responds to set-up changes was very satisfactory, less happy with the laps count for the day," Allison said. "I hope that in the remaining days we get some more mileage under our belt.”

Follow live coverage of the second test here.

Click here for the gallery from day one of the second test

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.