Raikkonen: It's a small thing but it's the right direction

Ferrari driver Kimi Raikkonen has downplayed the apparent performance gains for Monza which helped team end the first day of the Italian Grand Prix weekend just behinmd the pace setting Mercedes pair, but ahead of the Red Bulls.

“It is a pretty small step and we wouldn't put anything in the car that wouldn't improve our performance,” Raikkonen told media at Monza at the end of day one.

“It's just a normal progress, we try to improve all the areas and that's one of them. It's a small thing but it's the right direction.”

“I think the first practice was pretty good, the second one less good, with new tyres and yellow flags and stuff like that. Overall it was not too bad, the car was feeling pretty OK. There are things to improve, always, but it started pretty OK.”

“We had a little bit of an issue with our front tyre [in FP2], we got some sort of cut for whatever reason. We were suppose to run those on a long run but we couldn't use it because it was broken, with the cut. So it was a bit messy but we will see what tomorrow brings,” added Raikkonen.

Teammate Sebastian Vettel was similarly cautious, "In general the car feels good, but we still need to improve from where we are, we need to make it feel good in every corner and bring it together."

"Other than that, the first impression is positive. We have a new engine, so I think it’s doing what it is supposed to do," added Vettel.