Raikkonen cautious regarding early Ferrari pace

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Kimi Raikkonen remained cautious despite Ferrari setting the pace during Friday practice for the Mexican Grand Prix.

Sebastian Vettel set the fastest time of FP2 on Friday afternoon, edging out Lewis Hamilton by 0.004s at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez. Raikkonen was 0.4s of his team-mate's pace in fourth and still sees room for improvement for Ferrari across the rest of the race weekend.

REPORT: Vettel edges Hamilton by 0.004s in FP2

"Well, it was only the first day of practice, so let’s see how it is tomorrow," Raikkonen said. "I think it wasn’t too bad a day from my side – it wasn’t perfect but it was not too bad to start with.

"Obviously it looked pretty OK today, but we need to see how it goes tomorrow to know exactly where we are. Like I said before, this is only Friday."

Raikkonen's approach mirrors that of team-mate Vettel, who says Ferrari can only set its expectations following Saturday's running.

"It can’t get any worse than last year because we didn’t finish the race," Vettel said. "But the pace was already very good last year so it seems there might be something about Mexico City that suits Ferrari and hopefully we can carry that momentum into tomorrow.

"It’s difficult to say, it’s Friday after all, so not the time to get excited. If we are in the same position tomorrow afternoon then we can be excited."

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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.