Alfa Romeo’s Kimi Raikkonen says that Wednesday’s track time saw the team concentrate on setup work as they continuing to enjoy working with a ‘well balanced’ C38.

Raikkonen did 113 laps of the Montmelo circuit on Wednesday, pounding around with a best time of 1:18.209 on the C4 tyre late in the day. A stoppage on track right at the chequered flag proved inconsequential and Raikkonen was in upbeat mood as he greeted the press after his day’s debrief with his engineers.

Asked about whether he’s happy with the feeling of the Alfa Romeo after stepping out of one of F1’s fastest cars in 2018’s Ferrari SF70H, he said that the C38 stacks up as a good car to drive: “Well, you know, when I came here I didn’t really have any expectations so it was a bit unknown coming to a new place. When we got the new car, it’s been working well and it’s pretty nice balanced.

“Last week, we didn’t really do any setup work while today we did a few things just to see what happens when we change balance. But, so far, it’s OK. We don’t know what the others are doing, we’re concentrating on the most important things for us.”

“I think it’s a pretty straightforward car so far, it’s got good balance straight out of the box. No big issues. Where we go to fine-tune, there’s always things we won’t get perfect but that’s always like that. I don’t think I’ve ever had a car that was perfect. Quite positive after some of the runs today but we need to do the best we can.”

With just one day left for the Finn to prepare for the season opener in Australia in two weeks time, Raikkonen said that the workload for him is still extensive but that that’s nothing new at this point of the year: “There’s always a lot of things to work on, but that’s the same thing in testing every year. It’s the same for everybody. We’re just trying to put things where we think is best and do our programs and see what we can do for Australia. Melbourne is a bit different to other circuits, it’s a street circuit so I’ve no idea if our setup is where we want it to be. So that’s what we did today, to try to figure out.”

On whether there are any particular areas he feels the Alfa is lacking or can be improved on, he explained: “[There’s] not really anything I’m not happy with. Nothing big, there’s more things we’d like to try but there’s only a certain amount of hours and a certain amount of days. I think every year is the same, you think ‘Oh, we’d like to have tried this’ but it’s the same story every year. Everything so far is pretty smooth.”