Raikkonen: Ferrari can 'regularly beat' Mercedes

Kimi Raikkonen says Ferrari's start to the year shows it can catch and "regularly beat" Mercedes this season.

Following surprise Sebastian Vettel's victory in the Malaysian Grand Prix, Ferrari again looked threatening in China before Mercedes eased away in the final stint to take an ultimately comfortable one-two. However, Raikkonen is confident Ferrari can close that performance gap to be the fastest team overall this year.

"I don’t see a reason why not," Raikkonen said. "We have made big gains and we will make big gains during this year. Obviously everybody will improve so it depends what the rest are doing, so it definitely shows we are going in the right way and doing the right things.

"It is just being patient, we need time, we cannot make miracles overnight. Sebastian showed we can win, but it depends, one circuit is better for one team and the next could be a different story. We need to be up there when something happens to them, or the conditions change. I really feel as speed we will get there to regularly beat them."

And Raikkonen says there Ferrari should not be disheartened by the gap Mercedes was able to pull out late in the race.

"People didn’t expect us to make such big gains, so we are realistic. It is not ideal where we finished. We want to be winning at the front every weekend, but we have to be patient. At the beginning of the race we were close, then they pulled away, but I think more or less we know the reasons for that. Like I said things are now like this, but we will keep improving."

Click here to look under the skin of the front-running 2015 cars 

Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter