Kimi Raikkonen will start the Chinese GP from second place after Lotus found some of the qualifying performance that it has been missing over the past two seasons.
Raikkonen suffered badly last year from lack of one-lap pace, which regularly compromised his races.
However there was a significant margin to pole man Lewis Hamilton, and Raikkonen was cautious on his prospects for Sunday.
“I think the gap is quite big still and we don’t have that speed right now,” said the Finn. “So, second is not bad, I think it’s the best that I’ve been with the team ever. Not too bad, but of course you’d rather be in first place but I guess we don’t have the speed. I think we are missing downforce in the middle sector a bit, but we’ll see what we can do tomorrow.”
Although there’s a consensus that the Lotus is better on its tyres than rivals, Raikkonen said that the issue was not clear cut, in part because the car has changed a lot as updates have been added and taken away over the weekend.
“It’s a big question mark because we were pretty happy yesterday but the car is not exactly the same as it was then. For sure, we had some issues with the front tyres yesterday, but that should be pretty easy to change.
“Every day seems to be a bit different, so I don’t know if it’s going to be OK or not. Usually we’ve been pretty OK, apart from the last race when we had some issues. Hopefully it turns out to be good tomorrow but I think it will be very close and whoever gets things exactly right might make enough of a difference to win.”
Adam Cooper F1 