Kimi Raikkonen out-qualified team mate Sebastian Vettel in qualifying for the British Grand Prix, and will line up fifth on tomorrow's starting grid.
The Finn, who saw his contract with Ferrari extended into 2017 yesterday, never really looked in doubt of accessing Q3 with the exception of a brief moment in Q2 when he locked up at Turn 3 and ran wide.
But the performance level of the Scuderia now appears to firmly lag that of Red Bull with both Max Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo substantially edging out Raikkonen.
"It's always difficult to know, before the weekend, what's going to happen," admitted the Finn.
"The gap [with Red Bull] is not ideal, and we expected it to be a bit tricky here in these conditions, and that's how it turned out to be.
"We don't have enough speed, there's not much we can do to be at the front in these conditions, in windy conditions, as they are very tricky conditions for us.
"This is where we are right now, in this circuit and in these conditions. Hopefully tomorrow is a bit easier and we go forward from there."
While his relative performance isn't all that bad, Raikkonen considers there may not be much more he can do in terms of set-up to extract more speed from his Ferrari.
" I think in qualifying my car has been the best it has been all weekend, but obviously it was still not easy, but we are a bit stuck with certain things. With the set-up we have we cannot change it.
"We can change a lot of things but it won't help because of certain issues that make us struggle with the handing.
"We could change things but it wouldn't make a different. It was not easy but this is it. Is it the circuit, the conditions ? It's more the conditions that make us struggle a bit."
Raikkonen will nevertheless give it his best shot when the lights go green tomorrow, knowing that circumstances may always play into his hand.
"Race conditions are always different and can change a lot here, usually we are stronger in the race and hopefully tomorrow will be the same.
"We’ll try to make a good start, make the tires work and take the right decisions”.
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