Raikkonen: Difficult to pinpoint what Ferrari is lacking

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Kimi Raikkonen says it is difficult for Ferrari to pinpoint where it is lacking compared to Mercedes having yet to have a clean race weekend.

In three of the four races so far this season, only one Ferrari has finished while the other race saw Sebastian Vettel and Raikkonen collide at the first corner in China. With Nico Rosberg winning the opening four races and Mercedes already establishing an 81-point advantage in the constructors' championship, Raikkonen says a smooth race is required to help Ferrari make an accurate judgement on how big the deficit is.

"I think it’s not very easy to pinpoint what we need but I’m sure we know quite a few small things that we want to improve and we know that there’s some improvements coming but Mercedes were very fast for the last few years and they are fast this year," Raikkonen said.

"I don’t think that so far this year we have ever really put together a really clean weekend either so that doesn’t help. You cannot give anything away and expect to beat a team like them.

"We definitely have it to be done but I am quite confident that once we get everything as we want that we can be very strong as a team. We’ve been failing to finish with two cars in the position that we probably deserve so yes, it’s been disappointing but now we have a good way of doing things.

"We are behind where we want to be but I’m sure as a team we will get there."

With podiums in Bahrain and Russia, Raikkonen is currently third in the drivers' championship but already 55 points behind Rosberg and 12 points adrift of defending champion Lewis Hamilton.

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.