Team-mate and 2008 vice-champion Felipe Massa only arrived at Jerez direct from his homeland of Brazil mid-afternoon, and covered 27 laps before the close of play to wind up tenth on the list. Both drivers will return for day three.

“We haven't done many kilometres over these two days,” Raikkonen confessed, “because the conditions haven't really been good. We're mainly trying to understand how the slicks work and we're testing some solutions the car will use in the upcoming season.

“It's useless to speculate about what will be in the future. Too many things are different on the cars on the track. To get a precise idea we have to wait until we all have the new cars.”

On his return to the cockpit of Renault's R28 for the first time since the Brazilian Grand Prix at Interlagos at the beginning of last month, Fernando Alonso continued the Enstone-based outfit's technical programme, sampling slick tyres with a car set up to best simulate 2009 settings and overcoming a spin along the way to place seventh.

“It was a good day and I'm happy to be back in the car,” the Spaniard mused. “Unfortunately I damaged the car a little bit in the morning and so we lost some running, but the team did a good job to repair it quickly and I was able to run almost all of the afternoon without any problems.

“It was nice to run on the slick tyres as they are more grippy, but when you lose downforce from the car they don't feel massively different to grooved tyres.”

“It's good for Fernando to be back in the car and to get some experience on the 2009 tyres,” added the Régie's chief test engineer Christian Silk. “Fernando learnt a lot about the tyres and the engineers learnt a lot from his feedback and setting the car up with him.

“On the technical side we continued with a similar programme to yesterday, putting mileage on the car, and managed to achieve the main objectives for the day.”

Nico Rosberg lapped eighth-quickest on his return to action for Williams-Toyota, four tenths shy of Alonso, as the young German looked at set-up work and slick tyre development in preparation for 2009.

“Fortunately, it stayed dry all day today which allowed us to clock up the mileage with Nico while continuing our '09 development and set-up programme,” affirmed the Grove-based concern's test team manager Dickie Stanford. “The FW30B modified chassis covered 540 kilometres without encountering any problems, and Nico will finish testing the scheduled items tomorrow on the final day of this week's test.”