Kimi Raikkonen believes poor qualifying cost him chance to fight for German GP win

The Finn endured a difficult qualifying in the wet on Saturday and had to started the race from 10th position.

From there, however, the Lotus driver put on a charging drive to finish in fourth position, 16 seconds off race winner Fernando Alonso.

Raikkonen was elevated to third when Sebastian Vettel was handed a penalty for passing Jenson Button off track.

The former world champion welcomed to podium finish, but said he thought pushing for victory would have been possible had he started from the front.

"It's nice to have another podium, but obviously we would rather get it on the track," said Raikkonen. "Having said that I think we did the best we could today from the position we started. Maybe if we had found a bit more pace in the wet yesterday we could have started higher, avoided the traffic and pushed the leaders, but it is what it is.

"We were hoping for a bit better, but the car worked well all through the race and we still brought home some good points for the team so there are some positives to take to the next race."

The result allowed Raikkonen to move into fourth place in the championship with 98 points.

The Finn - returning to F1 following a two-year absence - admitted he had mixed feelings about his position, feeling he could have scored better results in some of this year's races.

"If you had told me in January that we would be fourth halfway through the season, I think I would have been pretty pleased. It's not a bad place to be, but I think we have a car good enough to have scored more points.

"I want to win and the whole team is pushing hard to make it happen, so let's see what we can do in the second half of the season..."