Raikkonen says car is painfully slow

Results from Friday's practice sessions in Abu Dhabi will not make good reading for Ferrari fans after Kimi Räikkönen and Giancarlo Fisichella could manage no more than tenth and seventeenth positions on the brand-new track.

Having won only one race in Belgium this year, Ferrari is hoping to equal the finishing position of its worst season so far this decade – third in 2005 – although, lying a point behind McLaren heading into the season finale, improvements will be needed in final practice on Saturday morning.

The car is not bad to drive but it is simply slow and lacks grip, as in fact has been the case very often this year," a down to earth Räikkönen said at Yas Marina after seeing the McLarens of Kovalainen and Hamilton lead the field. "It's not as though there is a specific reason why it's not going well but, most of all, its down to our choice to stop development of the F60, so our performance level compared to the others is going down race by race, given that so many teams are still working on this year's cars.

"There are only a few corners where you can make a difference, near the start of the lap. Then there are so many heavy braking points and slow speed corners, where stability on entry and acceleration on exit are the important factors.

"Going from daylight to artificial light? After two races in Singapore, it doesn't cause a problem. The pit lane exit? In terms of its layout, it's quite similar to Interlagos, except there's a wall instead of a guardrail."gpupdate.net