Barcelona  - Sunday's Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona on Sunday sees the teams competing in Europe for the first time this year and gives them an opportunity to see whether their testing during the three-week break has produced any advantage.

Championship leader Kimi Raikkonen of Ferrari believes that even though McLaren-Mercedes are currently third in the championship, the race for the constructors' and drivers' titles is far from over as they head into the fourth of 19-season races.

"It's going to be very close: all the teams have introduced updates ahead of the first European race, which makes it even more interesting. We have won the last two races and that might make our competitors even hungrier to win," he told the Ferrari website.

Raikkonen is on 19 points, three ahead of BMW-Sauber's Nick Heidfeld and is looking forward to the challenge of staying in front.

"If I can manage to keep all the others behind me in the race that would mean that I keep them also behind in the championship," the Finn said.

"For me personally it's (the first race in Europe) a bit special, because it's the first time that I start the European season as the leader in the championship."

The struggling McLaren team has also been very active in testing on the Circuit de Catalunya and completed 6,680 kilometres.

Lewis Hamilton, who won the first race in Australia, but has since finished outside the podium places, is looking forward to the race although he says he can't predict what will happen.

"I feel we have a competitive package at the track; the car seems to work quite well. We have a range of new components coming on board for this race which we tested this week and had some positive results, but we are not alone in doing this."

For Hamilton's team-mate, Heikki Kovalainen, the testing at the Circuit de Catalunya is of importance. "The circuit is one of probably the two most important test tracks we use, together with Jerez.

"It is a real performance tester; you need to have a really good aero performance in the car to go fast round here, which is why we always come here as it allows us to understand how well our aero package is performing. It has a good range of challenges so you can test everything," he said.

The surprise package this year so far is BMW, who head the constructors' standings after three races, prompting BMW motorsport director Mario Theissen to say they had a textbook start to the season.

"We're no longer the number three team, as last year, but over the first three races we have carved out our niche right up among the top three teams.

"We used the three-week break after the batch of overseas races for our intensive preparation for the European opener in Spain. The Circuit de Catalunya is one that makes wide-ranging demands and is frequently used for testing by the teams.

"It has often served as a yardstick for their general competitiveness. Here all the teams will be taking a step forward on the development front, us included. Afterwards there will be a fresh assessment of how things stand," he said.

Williams' Nico Rosberg is another driver looking forward to Sunday's race over 66 laps for a total of 307.104 km.

"I'm looking forward to the race because we know the circuit well as we've done a lot of testing there in the past.

"The car performed well at Catalunya throughout winter testing, so it should run well in the race. We had a promising test there last week; I had two day's preparation time with the car which should stand us in good stead for the race.

"The only difficulty with Barcelona is that track conditions are constantly changing so you're frequently having to adjust your set- up. Malaysia is now firmly behind us and I'm hoping we'll come away from the weekend with a positive result," he said. (dpa)