Kimi Raikkonen says he sacrificed his own race pace for Ferrari over the course of the weekend after finishing fifth at the Spanish Grand Prix.

Raikkonen was unhappy with Ferrari's new parts during Friday practice and switched back to an old specification, before only qualifying seventh on Saturday. The decision allowed Ferrari to compare his data with team-mate Sebastian Vettel, who kept the new specification all weekend.

"I think we learned a lot from going for two separate cars following yesterday and today so I'm more confident we can see things more balanced," Raikkonen said. "Obviously in a test if you have a run coming up, you change a few things so sometimes the only way to do this and see the difference is to go with two cars at the same time on the circuit with different things. I think yesterday I prepared to take the risk and sacrifice a little bit myself and if we can learn and we can speed up our learning and knowledge then that will obviously help us."

Team-mate Vettel finished third but crossed the line 44 seconds down on race-winner Nico Rosberg, but Raikkonen is refusing to dwell too much on the results of one race.

When asked what he made of the Mercedes advantage, Raikkonen replied: "Obviously I was doing my own race and I could sometimes see what happened with them but it felt like they were further away than they have been at some races. This circuit the whole weekend has been difficult and they probably have a bit more downforce than us and more power. So conditions like this can easily make a big difference, bigger than normal.

"It's one of those weekends so we have to see what we can do in the next races but I think we will have learned a lot from this weekend and we have good things to come on the car. It was not what we wanted obviously but it's still not a disaster and we know where we have to improve on."