Kimi Raikkonen expressed encouragement over the “straightforward” nature of Ferrari’s SF71-H during practice in China, but was cautious regarding the car’s long-run pace.
Raikkonen finished runner-up to Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton in both sessions, but closed the gap from three-tenths of a second to just seven-thousandths during their low-fuel Ultrasoft runs.
“It was a pretty good Friday”, said Raikkonen. “I’m quite happy with the feeling of the car. I think we have a pretty good base line to start from, it looks pretty good.
“The car has been quite straightforward since the beginning, so it easy to fine tune things.
“On one lap we had some traffic, I’m sure we could have gone faster. In the long run we never really got a proper idea due to the conditions: it started to rain and we had limited running, so it’s a bit tricky to know where we are.
“Today it was close, but then tomorrow who knows what the weather will be; things can change a lot from one day to the next.”
Team-mate Sebastian Vettel, who leads the standings off the back of successive wins, managed only sixth in the first session, though improved to fourth in the afternoon.
“I think at this track it is very important to find the right feeling with the car and its set-up,” said Vettel.
“I think we are quite close, [but] the car is not yet where I want it to be. So, we are still looking at how we can improve.
“I think the SF71-H has the pace, but you need to make sure it works. Today it’s been a mixed day and I think in the afternoon it was a bit better and I was a little bit happier.”
