Raikkonen Unhurt After 200mph Crash

Kimi Raikkonen walked away unharmed from a 200mph smash in final practice ahead of tomorrow's Italian Grand Prix. The Ferrari star destroyed his car on impact into a wall along the Curva del Serraglio, one of the fastest parts of the legendary Monza circuit.

Raikkonen, who trails Lewis Hamilton in the drivers' standings by 16 points with five races remaining, was approaching the left-hand Curva del Vialone. The Ferrari veered into a wall along the straight and his momentum propelled him a full 70 meters before he ploughed into a tyre barrier. Two marshals standing in a small gap in the wall narrowly avoided being hit by Raikkonen's battered Ferrari and flying debris. The force of the impact was so great the car was buried under a mound of tyres, but they did their job, preventing the Finn from potentially suffering serious injury.

After a few moments to gather his composure, Raikkonen emerged from his car unaided before walking back to the garage. Marshals eventually managed to remove the Ferrari from the tyre barrier before lifting it onto the back of a truck which ferried it around to the pits for the team's mechanics to investigate the fault.

Raikkonen will almost certainly use the spare car for qualifying this afternoon given the time constraints to carry out repairs. The accident took place 25 minutes into the hour-long session that was held up for 20 minutes for marshals to undertake repairs to the barriers.

Fernando Alonso ended the session with the fastest practice time over the two days, posting a lap of one minute 22.054 seconds. As he did yesterday, Alonso edged out team-mate Lewis Hamilton by 0.146secs, with Ferrari's Felipe Massa just over 0.5secs off the pace set by the reigning world champion.

The BMW Saubers of Nick Heidfeld and Robert Kubica were a strong fourth and fifth, followed by the Williams duo of Nico Rosberg and Alexander Wurz. Toyota's Jarno Trulli, the Renault of Heikki Kovalainen and Mark Webber of Red Bull Racing rounded out the top 10, with the latter over 1.6secs adrift.

Jenson Button was 11th in his Honda, with Anthony Davidson 15th for Super Aguri, while David Coulthard was down in 17th in the second Red Bull. Raikkonen was a lowly 20th, although he had only completed three laps by the time of his shunt.