Raikkonen predicts 'fierce fight' at Monza

"Traditionally Ferrari has been very competitive here, but also McLaren has been very strong, during the years when I raced for them, but for some reason or another I never managed to win," said Raikkonen.

"Let's hope we can make it this time, by being perfect from Friday morning to Sunday afternoon. Winning the home race of Ferrari would be a great feeling," added the Finn.

Raikkonen, who scored his best result in Monza last year with a second place for McLaren, is 16 points behind championship leader Lewis Hamilton with just five races remaining.

The Ferrari driver admits the team can't afford any errors if they want to have a chance of fighting for the title.

"My goal has to be to make up points on all of those who are ahead of me in the standings," he admitted. "The more we can close the gap on Alonso and Hamilton the better it is for me and Felipe (Massa).

"All the upcoming races are crucial: we can't commit any more mistakes. The team gives 110% and we have to beat our competitors and need to gain more points than them every time."

And after McLaren dominated last week's test at Monza, Raikkonen is under no illusions that this weekend's race will be easy, despite Ferrari arriving as favourites for victory.

"That was a good test, where we could try out some new things for the car," he said.

"Looking at the times, I think you can say that we have a fierce fight ahead of us; but you never know how much fuel the others use during the tests, so we'll only see during the qualifying what the situation is really like."