Kimi Raikkonen said that finishing sixth in the German Grand Prix was a "painful" result for Ferrari as it slipped behind Red Bull in the constructors' standings.

Both Raikkonen and Sebastian Vettel fell away from the Mercedes and Red Bulls in the race as Ferrari finished a distant fifth and sixth at Hockenheim, a result which drops the Italian team 14 points behind Red Bull. The 2007 world champion feels Ferrari was simply not fast enough to compete with Red Bull in Germany.

"Everybody can see where we finished," Raikkonen said. "It's obviously a bit painful for all of us but this is where we are right now. We just have to work harder. Of course we want to win, so we have to beat everybody and that's always the aim in racing.

"We were just not fast enough -- it was as simple as that, unfortunately. It wasn't too bad when we had fresh tyres, but they wore off quite quickly and that's about it.

"We were ahead of Red Bull but now they're ahead of us, but I'm sure we found some tools and hopefully we can challenge both of them later on, but it's not going to be easy. But that's always the aim."

The result comes a week after Raikkonen and Vettel struggled to get past Max Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo at the Hungarian Grand Prix, as Red Bull beat Ferrari to the podium.

When asked whether the feeling is any different compared to last weekend after recording back-to-back sixth place finishes, Raikkonen said the team cannot be satisfied either way.

"The end result was the same and it doesn't matter how you get it. They were not good results, not what we wanted but, like you said, they were two completely different stories that ended up with the same position.

"We cannot be happy either way, because this is not where we want to be, these are not the positions we want to be fighting for. It was quite a boring race, in a way, not much happening where I was, so if we can be fast that will obviously make it more exciting."