Ferrari only strong on super-soft in practice, Raikkonen says

Ferrari appeared to be in good shape on raw pace as Raikkonen led Sebastian Vettel in a one-two for the team on Friday afternoon.

But Raikkonen's discomfort with the car's handling on the other two tyre types left him uncertain about his chances.

"It's been quite a tricky day. I don't know if it's the conditions or the wind or something but I was sliding a lot and obviously not feeling very nice," he said.

"Once we put the super-soft tyres on we have more grip from the tyres and that helps.

"For whatever reason we've been quite struggling apart from the super-soft tyre.

"Our car is nice but it's just the other tyres are very difficult to get any grip from.

"But I had a pretty OK lap and the long run on the super-soft was OK."

Tyre wear is notoriously high at Shanghai, and Raikkonen admitted that the medium compound that is likely to be the main race choice was a question mark for Ferrari.

"I only used the medium in the morning and it didn't feel very good but also the soft didn't feel great and then the super-soft was the best so far," he said.

"The wind conditions are making it very tricky and hard to read."

Team-mate Vettel summarised Ferrari's day as "decent" with room for improvement.

"Overall I think we can still improve, but the balance is not yet where I want it to be, so let's see what we can do," he said.

"Friday is not that important in terms of position, it is more in terms of feel.

"The feel is OK but OK is not good, so we can still improve the balance of the car and work tonight to try to get on top of it."