Raikkonen remains hopeful for qualifying

The 2007 world champion reckons that provided the team could make some set-up improvements in tomorrow morning's one-hour free practice session, he and team-mate Felipe Massa will be able to run strongly.

"The car was not bad," said Raikkonen. "There were a few things that we can improve on to go faster, but overall I'm very happy with how the car performed.

"The laptimes are very close together, so we will see what happens tomorrow. But I'm happier today than I was on Friday at the last race. We will do some work and hopefully have a good grid position."

The Finn emphasised that with the top 17 in free practice 2 all within one second of pace-setter Lewis Hamilton, a small slip in qualifying can make a big difference to grid position.

"If you are one tenth slower, it could be five or six places," he said. "We need to do our maximum so that we can achieve the result.

"It's very hard to say from Friday times [how competitive we are] and we will know tomorrow morning where we are for qualifying. But for sure, it will be pretty close here."

Raikkonen added that he was delighted by the high temperatures, which suit the characteristics of the Ferrari F60 far better than the cooler conditions in the recent British and German grands prix.

"Usually when it's hot it has been better for us so we are very happy that it's hot because sometimes we have issues with getting the tyres working," he said.