On the back of a disappointing race in China, Kimi Raikkonen remains confident that things are slowly improving.

"We have had a difficult start to the season, so we need to get things on track and fix that situation," he told reporters in Barcelona today. "It's not an easy task, but I'm sure we can do much better.

"In China there were a lot of small things that influenced the final result and we would have understood the problems sooner if I had managed to take part in first practice," he continued. "That made the rest of the weekend difficult. But we know what happened.

"So far, this year has not been very straightforward but I am hopeful we can turn it round. I am sure we will get there, the question is when. Hopefully soon.

"We have been working hard and we have improved the car at every race and even a small thing can make a big difference to something like the handling for example," he added. "We have a much better understanding of our car now, but the others are still pushing to improve too. Hopefully at some races soon we will be able to fight with them."

Looking ahead to this weekend at the Circuit de Catalunya, where he finished second to Fernando Alonso last year, albeit in a Lotus, he said: "It would be nice to get a good result here as that always makes life easier, but getting a good result here rather than at any other circuit is not going to change the year completely. If we get the car running the way we like then we can get the results we want. The important thing is to have a clean weekend."

Check out our Thursday gallery, here.

Chris Balfe