Right direction, but a lot to improve - Raikkonen

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Kimi Raikkonen was confident that Ferrari's progress on Thursday at Monaco proved the team was headed in the right direction this weekend - but that there remained a lot of room for improvement.

"It went okay," said the Finn. "The afternoon was a lot better than the morning, so that shows we went in the right direction with the set-up changes we made. But there's a lot more to improve for Saturday, of course, because we're not yet where we should be.

"The ultrasofts were much better than anything else we're running here," he added. "I think they're as good as they can be, they're the best tyres for this track, but we still have to find a better way to make the most out of all compounds.

"Everyone made some mistakes, for sure, but that's what practice is for. I'm pretty satisfied with the long run I did with the supersofts, but this is not the easiest track to get things working at 100 per cent and today we didn't managed to get everything out of the car."

Raikkonen seemed unhappy when pressed about the number of mistakes on display by many of the drivers in the first two free practices. Raikkonen himself had several forays off into the run-off at Ste Devote, while his team mate Sebastian Vettel spun at Mirabeau and then brushed the wall at Ste Devote in what proved to be an eventful second session.

"This is not the easiest place when things are not exactly as you want them, but mistakes? You put it like it's a massive issue but people make mistakes and that's fine in practice.

"I don't understand how you make such a question," he complained when asked further about whether this had been a bad day of practice for Ferrari. "It's crazy questions what you're asking.

"It's just practice, it wasn't an ideal first day of running but many haven't been ideal before. Don't try to make a bigger story out of it than it is.

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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.