Kimi Raikkonen still believes he can win the F1 world title this year with Lotus

The Lotus driver is fifth in the standings, 49 points behind Alonso and says that while the Ferrari man goes into the second half of the season with a clear advantage, everyone else is well within striking distance.

"I have almost as good a chance as anybody else," he said at Spa. "I don't see that I have any better chance and I probably have the worst chance from the five guys [in the fight].

"But apart from Alonso the rest are pretty close to each other and there are also many points to be won."

When asked if he thought it realistic to think in terms of taking a second world championship in the first year of his F1 comeback, Raikkonen replied: "We still have a good chance, so why not?

"Nobody knows what will happen between now and the end of the year."

The 32-year-old Finn added that with nine races to go, there were plenty of opportunities to recover ground and for Alonso to trip up.

"He [Alonso] has quite a big gap in the points but there are many points still on the table," he said. "Any of us only needs to have a bad race and it's going drop you out of a few positions.

"Every race is important, but until we don't have any chance then we'll keep pushing. There are nine races left and after these back-to-backs [at Spa and Monza] there are still seven, so there are a lot of points to lose easily if you have some problems."

Raikkonen also played down his status as a favourite to win at Spa off the back of four Belgian Grand Prix wins there and Lotus's plan to use its new 'double DRS' at the high-speed venue.

"It's not any more special than other places," Raikkonen said of Spa. "It's a nice race circuit and usually it produces nice racing but I know this circuit as well as any other circuits, I haven't really raced here more than any others. It just has been pretty good for us, but I have had some bad races also. It's not like I come here and suddenly I should be good. It can be a disaster.

"Hopefully we can have a good normal weekend and we can be up there but we don't know yet.

Asked if he thought he could fight for a win if he had a 'normal' weekend, Raikkonen said: "We've been able to in most of the races this year so I don't see why we shouldn't be.

"We'll try. It's all we can do and then we'll see what happens. There is not any special thing that we could do more, and hopefully the new stuff we are getting is working and hopefully we can be up there and put ourselves in a position to try to win."