Scuderia Ferrari‘s Kimi Raikkonen struggled with the balance of the car suffering understeer but admitted his surprise that his lap times seemed to be okay, with the Finn finishing fourth in first practice and third in the second on Friday in Japan.
“It was one of those days that seem a bit tricky but in the end go for better,” said Raikkonen. “My feeling with the car was not very nice, I suffered a lot with understeer and I was struggling with the balance through the first sector, but the lap time was ok.”
Raikkonen was best of the rest behind the Mercedes, and finished only three-tenths of a second behind Nico Rosberg. The Finnish driver has shown good pace throughout both Friday sessions but feels there is more to come from the car.
“In the end we got a bit better, but we are not still where we want to be. In the second session I had a small electric issue, likely with a sensor, but we changed it and it was ok.”
Looking ahead to FP3 and Qualifying, Raikkonen wants the team to make some small changes on the car and hopefully they can go faster.
“Tomorrow is another day, we’ll try to work on small things to try to improve. If we get the car where we want and with a better feeling for sure we can go quite a bit faster.”
