Days after team boss Frederic Vasseur defended Antonio Giovinazzi, saying the Italian's lack of results this season is down to the team, Kimi Raikkonen has also spoken out in support of the youngster.

"It's obviously not all been up to him," said the Finn, "he's unfortunately had a lot of issues on the car.

"Obviously he has quite little experience," he continued, "and any mileage you can put it's obviously going to help him a huge amount more than on my side, so it's been very unfortunate, but that's racing, and obviously we always try to fix things."

Having suffered an issue with his control electrics in China which meant he was unable to post a time and therefore started from the back of the grid, this weekend he has been issued, as has Raikkonen, with a new set which brings him up to three sets for the season thus far, thereby incurring a ten-place grid penalty.

"Antonio so far couldn't show his real potential, but that's completely down to the team," said Vasseur earlier this week. "Some technical issues and therefore missed track time meant that he could never get comfortable and get the best out of the car, but especially in Australia in Q1 he showed how fast he is.

"Everyone just needs to be a bit patient and I'm sure he'll come around," he added.

"He's had more issues on the practice with the reliability," said Raikkonen, "small issues that are not a big issue but stop the car and then we don't get running, so it doesn't help him.

"Hopefully he'll get a clean weekend and then we can judge him much easier, I think it's very unfair right now to write him off. I think he can do fast laps but obviously he has not that much experience, and when you miss one full session in any weekend it's going to be a nightmare to try to build back on it."

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