Kimi Raikkonen acknowledges Formula 1’s pecking order heading to Melbourne is a “big mystery” as Alfa Romeo could be “fifth or we are 10th.”
Raikkonen’s new team, or old team given that he made his Formula 1 debut back in 2001 with Sauber, put in a solid showing during the two pre-season tests.
The Finn was fourth fastest in the opening test before falling back in the second.
Both Raikkonen and his new team-mate Antonio Giovinazzi were outside the top ten on the overall timesheets but many believe they could still be one of this year’s surprise packages.
As for Raikkonen, he says time will tell.
“It’s a big mystery,” he told Motorsport.com.
“We’re going to give our best and see what we get in the first race and just work from there.
“We’re not 100 percent where we want to be, but if you asked anybody they’d probably say the same.
“I don’t know if we are fifth or we are 10th, I think it’s going to be quite close in the middle pack.
“If you do your job well you’re going to be much further up than if you have an off-day or don’t get everything right.
“We can only do the best we can and see what we get in the first race.”
The 2007 World Champion revealed that Alfa Romeo did not push hard for the ultimate lap time in testing, saying there is still a lot to learn about the C38.
“I don’t think we are where we probably want to be, exactly,” he added.
“The conditions are always different to race weekends because of the cold weather, and we didn’t really push for the best lap time.
“We tried different tyres and we have things to learn from them also. It was a bit tricky to get a lap time out of the softer tyres.
“We’ll take what we learned here and go through them and see what warm weather, hopefully, in Australia changes.”
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