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Raikkonen: Three races until we know pecking order

ESPN Staff
March 12, 2015 « Button: 'I haven't driven a McLaren like this before' | Williams 120% better prepared in 2015 - Massa »
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Kimi Raikkonen does not think the true pecking order of 2015 will be clear until the third race of the year in China next month.

Ferrari heads into the season-opening Australian Grand Prix with renewed optimism after an encouraging winter hinted at improvements on both the engine and aerodynamic side. Raikkonen is looking to bounce back from one of his worst seasons in F1 but he says it is still too early to make predictions about this year or where Ferrari stands in relation to its rivals.

"There's no point to guess anything and we will see in three days exactly where we are here," Raikkonen said. "I think we need two more races when we go into different conditions, different circuits, to see where everyone is. We should get a pretty OK result [in Australia] but where it's going to be is hard to say, so I don't know. I'm not interested to guess where we're going to be and what's going to happen. We will see in a few days and just try to do our maximum without mistakes."

Raikkonen struggled throughout 2014 with Ferrari's unpredictable F14-T and its lack of front-end grip. Over the winter he recorded an improvement in the SF15-T but Raikkonen is not assuming that will make the new campaign completely straightforward.

"Obviously winter testing was OK so we feel better overall as a team with how everything has run. I'm sure we are much more ready for this year. Are we going to always get what we want? Time will tell, probably it's not always going to be as nice as you wish but that's pretty normal. I think we're in a much stronger position but we still have a lot of work to do to be where we want to be. That's part of the game and I think we have to be happy where we are, at least in testing, compared to where we finished last year. We've done a good job but we'll have to wait and see if it's good enough or how far we are [improved]."

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