Red Bull is now Ferrari's target - Raikkonen

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Kimi Raikkonen says Ferrari's main target this season is now to beat Red Bull to second in the constructors' championship.

Ferrari entered 2016 with the aim of challenging for the championship until late in the season, off the back of a year which included three victories last season. However, the team has yet to win a race this year and Ferrari president Sergio Marchionne recently admitted focus will need to switch to 2017 as targets have not been met.

While Raikkonen acknowledges the target is no longer the one Ferrari entered the season with, he says the team cannot just write off the season completely and needs to beat Red Bull.

"We obviously want to be second because we cannot win it anymore," Raikkonen said. "I mean, maybe there are chances if the other team doesn’t finish at all. We lost second place a few races ago ... In the last two weekends we’ve been going in the right direction, improving, so hopefully that’s also the case in the upcoming races."

Ferrari was quicker than Red Bull at Monza, partly due to a new power unit which saw the last development tokens spent by the Scuderia. Raikkonen finished fourth in the race behind team-mate Sebastian Vettel and the two Mercedes drivers, but when asked if he had missed out on his best opportunity to score another podium before the end of the season, the Finn replied: "No, I’m sure we’ll have our chances.

"The aim is always to finish higher up all the time and we’ll see. We have to keep doing our best and I’m sure we’ll get that podium."

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Scene at the Italian Grand Prix

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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.