Raikkonen sees progress from Russia at Ferrari

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Kimi Raikkonen feels Ferrari has made a better start to the Spanish Grand Prix weekend than it did at the last race in Russia.

Mercedes held a clear advantage during the last race in Sochi, with Raikkonen struggling with the handling of his car and finishing a distant third in the race behind Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton. Having been second in both practice sessions in Barcelona - a quarter of a second off Rosberg in FP2 - Raikkonen was encouraged by Friday's running.

"For me it feels like we started off the weekend a bit better," Raikkonen said. "It’s easier to make the tyres work than in Russia. But there’s still work to be done before we are 100 per cent happy, but at least we’re getting close to that. It’s still not exactly where we want it to be but we’re doing our normal work and we’ll see what we can do."

Asked if he also felt Ferrari was closer to Mercedes than in recent races, Raikkonen replied: "It’s only Friday and if you only look at the other Fridays then maybe we are.

"But we don’t know what the others are doing, we’re doing our own stuff and, like I said, it’s not bad but we can still improve here and there. It’s just a normal weekend story. This is just one track, one day, so you cannot suddenly reach the conclusion we’re close to them."

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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.