BARCELONA, Spain -- Kimi Raikkonen says Ferrari is in a much better position this year than it was in pre-season testing last year.
The Italian team set the pace in the second week of testing at the Circuit de Catalunya, with Kimi Raikkonen clocking a 1:18.634 on the final day to go comfortably clear of his rivals. In general, Ferrari's pre-season performance is the closest any team has looked to the dominant Mercedes team over the past three years and Raikkonen appears confident the SF70H is not flattering to deceive like its predecessor did 12 months ago.
"I think everything was more or less pretty positive," Raikkonen said. "The car has been running well and the feeling since the first day has been pretty good for both drivers. I think the team has done a good job over the winter, preparing the car and making it reliable.
"If you compare to a year ago we are much much better in many ways. But where are we going to be in the first race? I have no idea. It's the same story every winter and we will see in a few weeks."
Despite setting a lap time 0.7s clear of Mercedes' best efforts over the two weeks, Raikkonen said there was more time that could have been extracted from the Ferrari.
"No, for sure we can go faster but that is not the purpose of this thing [testing]," he added. "Obviously you try to go as fast as you can whatever you decide to do, but there are a lot of things looking at it afterwards where we can improve and do better, but that is part of testing.
"We can be quite pleased with how it felt this morning. It was one of the better days we have had in two weeks, but it's early days and we haven't done a single race yet, so let's see when the season starts."