Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen admits fourth position at the Japanese Grand Prix was always the maximum he could hope for after his disappointing qualifying performance.
Raikkonen lined up sixth at Suzuka and emerged from Turn 1 unscathed as several incidents occurred around him. From there, he spent the middle stint reeling in Valtteri Bottas and successfully completed the undercut on the Williams driver to finish behind team-mate Sebastian Vettel.
"Yesterday the feeling was correct and I was fine and I felt quickest all the time apart for the first run in Q3 and of course the second run which I never managed to do because of the red flag," Raikkonen said. "No doubt that compromised our end result. The race was fine but obviously you start behind people for certain times so then the race comes to trying to pass them one way or another, but we got stuck and then I was looking at fourth which was more or less the best we could do from the position where we started."
Given the characteristics of the Suzuka circuit Raikkonen feels Ferrari should be happy to have been the best of the rest behind Mercedes.
"The feeling was fine, everything seemed to work well, we had really good pit stops where we managed to jump the Williams. I think obviously it's not ideal to finish fourth - third and fourth - but obviously we knew that this wasn't going to be our strongest place here and I think looking that point onwards we must be happy with being the second best team [behind Mercedes] and we will keep doing the progress and going in the right direction doing the right things. We just have to keep working and doing the same things and I'm sure we'll keep improving."