Raikkonen "could have pushed more"

The Finn - who last week in China described poor qualifying as a "habit" he needed to break - achieved his best grid position of the year, but he was overshadowed by Ferrari team-mate Vettel splitting the Mercedes to get on the front row.

"I think there was more grip than I expected," said Raikkonen.

"Afterwards it's easy to say I could have pushed a bit harder in certain places but I wasn't sure.

"But the car was OK, the lap wasn't too bad, maybe I just ran a little bit wide in one corner but that wouldn't have cost a lot of laptime.

"I could have pushed more in certain places because there was surprisingly good grip."

The result was still Raikkonen's best qualifying position since the 2013 German GP.

"It gives you a better chance or a more easy life for tomorrow as long as we make a good start out of it," he said.

"Obviously then the race can turn out to be different because of that, so that helps.

"We know that we still have some work to do and things to improve but I'd take this rather than fifth or sixth place - I'm kind of happy."