Kimi Raikkonen believes he will have no problems adapting to the Monte Carlo circuit

The Finn has not driven on the street circuit since he left Formula 1 in 2009, but he reckons his previous knowledge of the track will be enough this weekend despite the challenges of the tight course.

"I don't think it is any different to driving a rally in the middle of the trees," said Raikkonen. "It is a bit more tricky here but I know the circuit, so...

"Luck is important but you can't push your limit too much at the beginning because the circuit changes and it doesn't matter if I'm 15th or first in the practices. We need to understand how the circuit is changing to get the car right and we only need a few fast laps in qualifying, and in the race every lap, but in practice it doesn't count.

"You have to make your own luck and do things right and even if you are leading there might be an accident in front of you that you can't avoid - that is just Monaco. I don't think I am a very lucky guy and I never counted on that."

Raikkonen has his eyes set on his first victory of the season after strong races in Bahrain and Spain, but the Finn admits it will not be easy to be on top in Monaco.

"We always try but if we don't win, we don't win and we weren't fast enough," he said. "We will try again this weekend but this place is definitely not easy to win. We will keep trying though."

Raikkonen, who has finished on the podium in the previous two races, says it is hard to predict how strong his Lotus team can be this weekend given the nature of the circuit.

"I don't know because I haven't been with the team before at this type of circuit or low speed track and this time last year it was difficult because they went a different direction with their design. Last year it definitely didn't work in the low speed corners and then in 2010 they were pretty strong here so we have to see how it is tomorrow."

The former world champion will be racing Pirelli's super soft tyres for the first time this year, and he conceded their performance is an unknown to him.

"It is a different tyre here with the super softs and we haven't run them the whole year so like I said we will have to see how they are tomorrow and if we have some worries we will have to try to fix them and hopefully we'll have a good qualifying."