Kimi Raikkonen says Ferrari’s ability to improve the car has given him a confident feeling with his Formula 1 car despite suffering a disaster couple of races in Singapore and Malaysia.

While the Finnish driver was involved in the blast off the starting grid crash with Max Verstappen and Sebastian Vettel, which ruled all three out of the race, Raikkonen has been hit with a double dose of pain after picking up an engine issue on his way to the grid in Malaysia.

With Ferrari unable to fix the engine issue, believed to be a similar problem to the one Vettel suffered during qualifying which forced him to start from 20th, the 2007 F1 world champion has failed to complete a single racing lap since the Italian Grand Prix.

Despite his frustrations the Finn is remaining positive having found impressive pace during practice and qualifying in Malaysia which he hopes to carry into the Japanese Grand Prix.

“We didn’t go as far as we wanted but when it comes to performance and speed I think we’re pretty happy,” Raikkonen said. “There have been other issues, like last weekend, as it was being a very nice weekend, I was very happy with the car, with how it was handling and doing the things that we wanted it to, so for sure we have improved the car and the speed.

“But everybody else has improved too, so it’s all about who has improved most and, for sure, in some circuits we’ll be a bit faster than the other top teams, but I’m confident we’ll be where we’ve been lately.

“It’s been pretty close with the three top teams, we need to get everything right to fight with them. It’s a new place, with different conditions, so it’s difficult to say. I’m happy that I’m here and we’re racing, I’m happy to be racing when we have a good chance to do well.”