Ferrari’s reigning world champion Kimi Räikkönen set a scorching pace in the desert today as Formula One returned to the Bahrain International Circuit for three days of testing. Maintaining Ferrari’s strong pre-season form, Räikkönen lapped the 5.41km circuit in a time of 1m 32.079s which comfortably eclipsed the pole position time for last year’s Gulf Air Bahrain Grand Prix set by his Brazilian team-mate Felipe Massa.

The 28-year-old Finn was working through his first day in Bahrain alongside the Ferrari team’s official test driver, Italian Luca Badoer, completing 133 laps between them. Badoer finished the day second on the timesheets as the two all-new Ferrari F2008s kept ahead of the Panasonic Toyota Racing team which has joined them for the Bahrain test.

Germany’s Timo Glock maintained his impressive start to life as a Formula One driver by keeping pace with Badoer in the new Toyota TF108. As the winner of last season’s GP2 ‘feeder’ category, Glock follows Williams ace Nico Rosberg and McLaren-Mercedes sensation Lewis Hamilton into one of the most sought-after drives in the world’s biggest annual sporting series. “Overall I’m very happy with how today has gone,” Glock said. “We had some problems this morning, mostly due to sand on the track which meant I spun a few times. The surface is getting better though and hopefully we will be building from here and getting a little faster each day. It’s certainly warmer than the testing we’ve done in Europe so far.”

Glock was joined by Toyota’s young Japanese protégé Kamui Kobayashi, the former Formula 3 Euroseries rookie of the year who finished fourth in last year’s championship, one of the major proving grounds on the road to Formula One. Kobayashi was standing in for Glock’s veteran team-mate Jarno Trulli, who will begin his testing schedule in Bahrain tomorrow.

Testing Times – Bahrain International Circuit 4/2/2008
1.  Kimi Räikkönen - Ferrari F2008 (61 laps)  1m 32.079s
2.  Luca Badoer - Ferrari F2008 (72 laps)  1m 33.323s
3.  Timo Glock - Toyota TF108  (51 laps)  1m 33.418s
4.  Kamui Kobayashi - Toyota TF108  (44 laps)  1m 33.485s