Kimi Raikkonen secured his first podium finish of the season in Bahrain two weeks ago and feels sure his Scuderia Ferrari team can have another strong performance this weekend in China, although he stopped short before predicting where they will be compared to their rivals.
The Finn feels the 2016 Ferrari package is a strong one, although he feels there is still work to be done to make it a genuine front running car, and is looking to make it a good weekend at the Shanghai International Circuit this weekend.
“We come here to China as in any other race weekend, we’ll do the normal work and then on Sunday after the race we’ll see how it has paid off,” said Raikkonen. “There’s no point to start guessing now where we are going to be.
“I think that here we have a good chance, we’ll do our maximum and try to have a good result with both cars. For sure we have some work to be done, but we have quite a good package and speed wise we are more or less where we want to be.
“Let’s see if we can make a good weekend out of it, improving things here and there.”
Whereas Raikkonen finished on the podium, it was a much different story in Bahrain for team-mate Sebastian Vettel, who was forced out with engine issues on the formation lap, but the Finn revealed the problem was a different one to that which befell him during the Australian Grand Prix.
“The issue we had in the first race was different compared to the one Sebastian had in Bahrain,” revealed Raikkonen. “It’s very unfortunate for the team because we want both cars to finish, we know what the problems are, we fixed the first one and I’m pretty sure the other one is going to be fixed now.
“This is not ideal but unfortunately these things are part of racing, there are still things to improve but I’m sure we can have a strong season. Our car will be good in every place we go: is it going to be good enough to win? Time will tell.”
