Both Ferrari drivers have admitted that their car lacks fundamental pace after a difficult Hockenheim qualifying session for the team.
As well as being behind the Mercedes, the Ferraris in today's qualifying session fell behind the Red Bulls too and will line up for tomorrow's German Grand Prix on the third row in P5 and P6. Possibly more worrying for the Scuderia was that their quickest time was almost half a second slower than Daniel Ricciardo.
"We're just not fast overall," said Kimi Raikkonen, who will start as the lead of the Ferrari pair, "we need to put more downforce on the car to go faster."
He admitted too that the SF16-H does not have particular vices, beyond a general lack of the pace of the front-runners.
"Our car was behaving pretty nicely today and I was happy with the handling," he went on. "My last try in Q3 was a bit more tricky, I was struggling a little bit with the feeling from the tyres, but apart from that we had no massive issues. I don't have much to complain about from the behaviour of the car, we are just lacking overall speed."
His team-mate Sebastian Vettel concurred, adding: "Well I think it's clear that in qualifying we were not as competitive as we wanted to be, not just in who is ahead but who is behind, and looking at the gaps we're only two tenths quicker than the Force India. We are usually a lot quicker than two tenths.
"Clearly we did not get everything right so we need to understand why…I was very happy with the lap in Q3, but it wasn't good enough, simple as that."
Both Ferrari drivers were more optimistic for the race however.
"For the race…we should be a lot more competitive compared to today," said Vettel. "Usually we do pick up quite a bit from Saturday."
Raikkonen agreed: "Usually the race is our stronger side, but every circuit is different. Tomorrow it's a new day, we'll do our own race, you never know what is going to happen. We need to make a good getaway from the start and hopefully take the fight to the guys in front, and then do our best."
