Kimi Raikkonen felt there was progress still to be made with his SF70H despite finishing second only to Scuderia Ferrari team-mate Sebastian Vettel during free practice for the Malaysian Grand Prix on Friday.
After a wet opening practice in which the Finn only completed only twelve laps in finishing fourth fastest, Ferrari appeared to have the pace on the rest of the field when conditions improved in the afternoon, but Raikkonen was left more than six-tenths of a second down on his team-mate.
With the second session being red flagged with more than ten minutes to go thanks to Romain Grosjean’s crash after running over a dislodged drain cover, Raikkonen felt that he missed the opportunity to improve on his time.
“Today’s been OK and everything ran smoothly,” said Raikkonen. “In the morning we had wet conditions and only managed a few laps, and in the afternoon the session was cut short because of the issue with the track.
“It’s a pity that we couldn’t use the whole session and do more timed laps, because for sure we could have further improved. But the car was feeling good: I made some mistakes on a new set of tyres but apart from that it was a pretty straightforward day.
“Lap times don’t mean much today, as obviously we don’t know what everybody else was doing.”
