Kimi Raikkonen thinks Ferrari's true pace has been hidden this season because it has rarely been able to get in front of Mercedes at the start of races.
Sebastian Vettel and Raikkonen beat the Mercedes pair off the line at the Hungarian Grand Prix and were both successful in matching the pace of the chasing Nico Rosberg. Ferrari looked to be on course for at least a double podium finish before Raikkonen suffered a race-ending MGU-K failure while running second in the closing stages.
Vettel went on to win the race and Raikkonen thinks the result is proof of what Ferrari can do if it gets ahead early.
"We had good speed and we pulled away from them, not easily, but we were consistently faster than them," said Raikkonen. "I don't know what would have happened if we were behind them, probably we couldn't have used our own speed because it is hard to overtake."
Despite spending three development tokens to upgrade the engine in Canada Ferrari had appeared to slip off the front-runners' pace in the races leading into Hungary, with even Williams finishing ahead at Silverstone. However Raikkonen thinks the difficulties in overtaking in modern F1 have given a false impression of Ferrari's pace.
"There have been many times this year when we feel we had more speed than we have been able to show because we were stuck behind another car and not been able to overtake.
"So the benefit of making good starts made a big difference and it was nice to have a good start with both cars because it hasn't been our strongest point this year. It shows that we are doing things right and that the car is not too bad."