Red Bull boss Christian Horner says third and fourth was the maximum for his team in China, though he thinks the team was helped by Ferrari leaving Kimi Raikkonen in "no man's land" late in the race.

Max Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo finished between the two Ferrari drivers, with the former scoring a podium which had looked unlikely ahead of the weekend. The damp start brought Red Bull into contention but it seemed likely they would drop behind Ferrari as the track tried out.

Verstappen and Ricciardo's third stops, where they took another set of super-softs each, forced leading pair Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel for a final stop of their own. But while that was happening, Ferrari kept Raikkonen out on his old soft tyres -- hoping to get him to the end -- despite the Finn growing increasingly frustrated over the radio at the handling of his car and the fact he was losing time in traffic while his rivals were in clear air and on fresh rubber.

When he finally did pit, he emerged in sixth behind Carlos Sainz's Toro Rosso. Though he quickly got by and caught up to the Red Bulls with super-soft tyres of his own, he ran out of laps and had to settle for fifth.

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Explaining Red Bull's strategy in the dry, Horner said: "The reason we went for the super-softs, we felt in these damp conditions, for us with our car as it is at the moment, to turn that soft tyre on would be maybe a bit too much. We felt the more competitive tyre would be to go onto the super-soft and then have a second stop.

"At this stage in the race Ferrari and Mercedes were talking about going to the end and then obviously Sebastian triggered it with his stop, Lewis covered it. What didn't appear to make any sense was why they left Kimi [Raikkonen] that long [on the first set of softs], because he sort of ended up in no-man's land. To get our car ahead of a Ferrari and a Mercedes is a good day's work. Solid pit work, good strategy, good racing from the drivers. I think that was the maximum we could get from it."

After the race Raikkonen voiced his frustration with his strategy and made it clear "much more" would have been possible if he had been allowed to pit when he wanted to. The Finn has failed to finish on the podium in both races this season despite Ferrari clearly having a car to match Mercedes at the front of the grid.

Ferrari president Sergio Marchionne has called on F1 team boss Maurizio Arrivabene to sit down with Raikkonen and discuss his form.