The man who has won the bragging rights for fastest driver in pre-season testing believes Ferrari’s potential this year largely surpasses that from a year ago.

Kimi Raikkonen ended his last stint of the week by topping the timesheet with a 1:18.634, putting Ferrari overall comfortably clear of rival Mercedes.

“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.”

The Finn certainly put in a good effort on the closing day but interestingly admitted he had not unleashed the SF70H’s full potential.

“No, for sure we can go faster but that is not the purpose of this thing [testing],” he said.

“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.”

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