Kimi Raikkonen says GPS data shows how much Mercedes is able to turn up its power when it needs to in qualifying, and admits Ferrari is not capable of matching it.
All engine manufacturers hold back a higher power setting for qualifying, but when it really matters in Q3 Mercedes seems to be able to make a significant step beyond the others. Even though Ferrari has finished second five times this season, neither driver has qualified on the front row of the grid after 16 races and Raikkonen admits qualifying is a weakness of the SF16-H.
"We are better in the race than in qualifying, the car behaviour is not too bad, but we are missing lap time. We have to be faster every lap to be challenging the others."
Asked about Mercedes' advantage over Ferrari in qualifying, Raikkonen said: "It's only guessing what they do and what the difference is, but we've seen it before, here and there in race conditions and in qualifying there's a lot -- in the last qualifying they go a lot faster," he explained. "We've all got GPS, we can see what happens, but we're doing our maximum and this is what we can do."
Although Raikkonen suspects the crux of the issue is Mercedes' qualifying mode, he recognises it is not the only area Ferrari is lacking.
"We have to improve things and that's nothing new. We just have to make the car faster to be able to challenge and there are areas where we have to improve."