'Hopefully it will be a three-way fight' - Raikkonen

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Kimi Raikkonen is hoping Ferrari, Mercedes and Red Bull are all fighting for victory at this weekend's Singapore Grand Prix.

Mercedes struggled at the circuit last season as Sebastian Vettel won from Daniel Ricciardo, but enjoyed a solid day of practice on Friday as Nico Rosberg set the pace in FP2. Having been second fastest in the later session, Raikkonen says he is encouraged by the early signs from Ferrari but is not yet convinced it will be in the mix on Saturday.

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"We’ll try to do a good job tomorrow, start the day well and see what we can do in qualifying," Raikkonen said. "Of course it’s going to be difficult but we hope for the best and hopefully we can have the speed to challenge.

"Hopefully it will be a three-way fight, but today was only practice. We had a good feeling so we can definitively do something this weekend. That doesn’t mean we’re going to be fast enough tomorrow but we’ll give it our best and hopefully we can be starting the race from the front."

Like Max Verstappen - third fastest in FP2, 0.4s off Rosberg's time - Raikkonen is confident the deficit to the Mercedes can be closed on Saturday.

"It was quite an OK day. In the second practice the car was feeling good and those three tenths we, for sure, can get, pushing a bit harder here and there. But tomorrow is another day and we have to wait and see."

And Raikkonen puts the big gap between himself and team-mate Sebastian Vettel down to confidence in the car on a street circuit.

"If you have a good feeling with car that makes all the difference here. In FP1 it wasn’t so great, so the lap time is not going to be so nice when you don't trust the car. In FP2 the car felt nice and the lap time came quite easily, so far so good, but tomorrow it’s another day."

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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.