Kimi Raikkonen thinks Ferrari was "very close" to pole position before mistakes forced it to settle for the second row of the grid for the Chinese Grand Prix.
Raikkonen, who has not had a pole position since 2008, was provisionally leading the early stages of Q3 before a blistering Nico Rosberg lap saw him open up a half second advantage. Neither Raikkonen or teammate Sebastian Vettel could respond, with both making mistakes at the penultimate corner, and were both surprisingly pipped to second on the grid by Red Bull's Daniel Ricciardo.
"I'm pretty disappointed because I had a mistake and it cost us an easy second place, if not close to first," Raikkonen said. "But we tried and we still have a third place so it's not a disaster but obviously there was much more.
"On the previous run, on the same corner I went pretty deep - too deep - and in the last run I was quite a bit up on that lap and just ran wide at the hairpin and lost a lot of time. It's a shame, I think we had a chance to be on top today but that's how it goes and we try and make the best out of it tomorrow."
Asked if he would have been on pole with a clean lap, he replied: "Very close, at least. Whether it would have been enough I don't know but very close.
Unlike Ferrari, Rosberg will start Sunday's race on soft tyres, which should give the Italian team a pace advantage in the opening laps of the race. Coupled with the team's quick starts that could well shift the balance in Ferrari's favour early on but Raikkonen is refusing to get carried away.
"It's hard to say whether it's going to be or not. We'll see how it pans out, we will try to do the maximum and see how it pans out.
"We have to make a normal good start and go from there and see how that pans out. I'm sure this circuit is not in the ideal conditions after the rain and hopefully tomorrow it will be more like it was yesterday, we try to make the fastest race."