Raikkonen buoyed by Hamilton problem

The points leader fell from third to fifth at Istanbul when his right front tyre delaminated. The result allowed Raikkonen and his Ferrari teammate Felipe Massa to close to within 16 and 15 points of Hamilton respectively, with five races remaining.

Raikkonen said Hamilton's incident showed that the title contenders could not take anything for granted in the deciding rounds.

"After every race I get asked how the championships will proceed and my answer is always the same: we have to wait until the last race in Brazil to be able to say for sure, because anything can happen," Raikkonen said.

"Istanbul was a fine example: Hamilton was doing well and racing for high points but then unexpectedly he had a tyre failure; nevertheless he collected some points, but not as many as he had hoped for.

"He will certainly give his best until the end, but that is what we will also do. You can't take anything for granted and we have to push to the maximum race after race."

The Finn is now behind Massa in the championship again after having to follow his teammate throughout the Turkish race. Raikkonen said he still rued the qualifying error that left him third on the grid while Massa took pole, as he was confident he had the pace to win on Sunday.

"If on Saturday all would have gone well, I could have caught the pole," he said.

"But after I had been beaten by my teammate I knew that my cards had already been played. When you know when your teammate is going to pit, there is hardly anything to do, above all if you are the one who has to stop before him.

"I got really close to Felipe just once, but we were at the end of the second stint. My car was really, really good: I could have gone much faster than I was.

"The most important thing was that the team gained as many points as possible, so there was no point in taking unnecessary risks. Anyway, we have reduced the gap: that is what we wanted, but just like in Budapest my race was quite boring.

"Thinking about what could have been done in a different way doesn't change anything. I made a mistake in my last attempt in Q3 and I paid the consequences. I hope that next time we will have a perfect weekend."