Raikkonen: Ferrari making the right improvements

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Kimi Raikkonen says Ferrari is making "the right improvements" as it starts to close the gap to Mercedes at the Hungarian Grand Prix.

Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg were 1.6s clear of the field on supersoft tyres in FP1, with Ferrari only just ahead of Red Bull despite Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen only using soft tyres. In FP2, Red Bull was second quickest to Mercedes but Ferrari also closed the gap to less than a second and Raikkonen believes the team made good decisions working on the car.

“Yeah I think we made the right improvements," Raikkonen said. "Obviously there are things that we can improve and go faster but overall it seemed to be OK. A normal day.

"In the end it was pretty OK. As a Friday we made some improvements and for sure we can still improve but overall it wasn’t too bad. "

And Raikkonen says he has not been paying attention to the gap to Mercedes during Friday practice.

"Well I haven’t looked at all the times so it’s too early to say. But we know they are fast and obviously I’m certain we can improve. How much they improve tomorrow is another case, but we will see tomorrow."

Asked about changes to the Hungaroring this year, Raikkonen replied: "They have done a really good job, the circuit is very smooth and the kerbs are OK."

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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.