F1: Ferrari woes overshadow Raikkonen's progress

Kimi Raikkonen says his own personal improvement in 2016 was overshadowed by Ferrari's lack of competitiveness this year as the Scuderia failed to win a race.

Following on from three victories in 2015, Ferrari had targeted fighting for the championship until the final round this season, but instead dropped behind Red Bull to finish third in the constructors' championship. While Ferrari struggled, Raikkonen enjoyed a more productive campaign and scored 36 more points than last season, while also outqualifying teammate Sebastian Vettel over the season.

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Despite the progress in terms of his own performance, Raikkonen says Ferrari's year as a whole makes it irrelevant how well he drove.

"It doesn't matter if it's better than last year or not; what matters is that the end result was far from what we, as Ferrari, as a team, wanted from this year," Raikkonen said. "For sure there are positive things, like the way we have been working lately, the way we are doing things, the way we work well together even if the results weren't always what we wanted."

And Raikkonen is wary of reading too much into the positive signs he saw from Ferrari toward the end of this season, with 2017 presenting a different challenge as new aerodynamic regulations are introduced. 

"I'd say a lot good things about the team and hopefully next year we are where we want to be as Ferrari. Obviously it would be a lot more fun for a lot of us to be at the front, but once we'll get the new cars on the circuit we'll see.

"There are a lot of changes, so it's pointless to speculate with such big changes. Hopefully we'll be where we want to be and where we also deserve to be. It was far from an ideal year for all of us but this is how racing goes. We did good races and not so good races, had too many small issues but that's what happens in racing sometimes."