Kimi Raikkonen admitted losing time to fuel system checks was far from ideal but the Finn believes the Scuderia Ferrari SF16-H is going to be a better car than its 2015 predecessor after his first day of pre-season testing at the Circuit de Catalunya on Wednesday.
After taking over from Sebastian Vettel, Raikkonen was forced to sit out the majority of the morning session, but came back in the afternoon to complete 78 laps and finished third fastest, and felt the car shows improvements compared to the SF15-T from 2015.
“The atmosphere in the team is quite nice even if, honestly, we’re still working on different things and still find something new to work on, but I am sure it’s going to be a better car than last year’s,” said Raikkonen.
“There are always small changes between one car and another, they are never the same. We had improvements in many areas from the past season. These are early days, especially for me with this car.
“We are happy so far, even if we know that there are still a lot of things to do. There were tricky things and it takes time to fix them.
“It was painful losing time today, but we always try to do our best. There are always mistakes but we always want to improve and learn from them.”
