Raikkonen confident of stronger race pace for Ferrari

Kimi Raikkonen is confident Ferrari can get closer to Mercedes in race trim, after the Finn qualified fourth, seven tenths off pole sitter Lewis Hamilton, for the Bahrain Grand Prix.

The Scuderia responded to Mercedes’ dominant Friday with a 1-2 in FP3 before challenging the Silver Arrows all the way up until the final lap in qualifying where the lead SF16-H of Sebastian Vettel was third and half a second down.

“I think we were pretty close to Mercedes until the last run,” Raikkonen said. “It looks like they do something different at the end of Q3, they seem to have more horsepower or whatever it is, because they always jump away.

“But qualifying is one thing, the race is quite another, so we know that in the race we’re always slightly stronger against them, closer, at least. Will tomorrow be the same? Who knows?

“We try to do our best and see how it goes and where we’re going to end up. It’s obviously not going to be easy, we know we have work to do but slowly we’re making things better and hopefully we’ll be even closer to them than in qualifying.”

While team-mate Vettel targets a repeat of his great Melbourne start in Sunday’s race, Raikkonen, who also overtook both Mercedes on the opening lap in Australia, warns that the pattern will not necessarily repeat itself.

“That was just one time, one race, so it’s not like you can guarantee we’ll do good starts. Sometimes we have issues and you cannot make a good start because of many things.

“We hope we can make another good start but it’s not guaranteed. It depends on so many things, but we’ve been always pretty OK, even last year. Hopefully tomorrow we can have good starts again.”

Raikkonen has never won the Bahrain Grand Prix, but the 2007 world champion has already been on the Sakhir podium many times, including last year when he had one of his best races in his second Ferrari stint.

REPORT: Hamilton pips Rosberg to Bahrain pole by 0.077s

AS IT HAPPENED: Bahrain Grand Prix qualifying

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