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Power steering failure hampers Raikkonen

Kimi Raikkonen suffered steering issues in the morning before afternoon rain limited his running to 43 laps © Sutton Images

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Kimi Raikkonen revealed that a problem with the power steering prevented him from completing more than 17 laps during the morning session of the third day of testing in Barcelona.

Raikkonen was in the car for the first time since Jerez after a problem with a suspension mount caused Lotus to miss the whole of the second test. He spent most of the morning in the garage as the team tried to fix a steering problem and admitted that what had appeared to be a minor issue turned out to require a full system change.

"Power steering just didn't work," Raikkonen said. "It was the same system as yesterday but just decided not to work today. It just didn't work, easy as that. We tried to fix it - we thought there was some small issue that we could fix and they tried to do it, unfortunately those things take a long time to do and it still didn't work as it should. Then we had to change the whole system so it takes another one and a half hours so it just takes a long time."

With only 234 laps under his belt during the whole pre-season, Raikkonen confirmed he would prefer to have more time in the car but said that as long as the E20 was reliable he was happy to race.

"I guess you always wish to have more days but it is what it is and you have to deal with it. At least in the first week we had good running and I don't think we have any major reliability issues in the car so that's a good thing. They're the main things that you want to fix, we had one problem last week, that's fixed and it's not going to be any more of an issue so it's just to get things in a level that you think you're happy and you know you press the right buttons at the right times, so like I said maybe a few more days would do no harm but I'm very confident that we'll get it right when it's the time."

Raikkonen added that the car's performance didn't differ from his expectations despite the fact that he hadn't run since Jerez in early February.

"After we've sorted out all the issues it was pretty much what I thought it would be, it was OK ... it's difficult (to compare to Jerez), I mean we have some new parts we should still have some parts coming for the first race but a different circuit, different conditions, but the feeling is more or less the same. We didn't get much done today and tomorrow we'll try things that we know if we don't try it now then we won't have the time to try it in the whole year, more or less, because it takes a long time to change. We'll just try to get some understanding on those few things and at least we'll know if we're going to try it or not in the races."

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.