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Kimi Raikkonen believes the 2015 Ferrari Formula 1 car's true race pace has been hidden because it has rarely been able to get ahead of pacesetter Mercedes to show it.

Sebastian Vettel and Raikkonen jumped the Mercedes duo of Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg at the start of Sunday's Hungarian Grand Prix and had the speed to pull away.

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Vettel converted that into a second GP win of 2015, holding on despite losing a large lead to a late safety car, while Raikkonen retired with an MGU-K problem while on course for second.

"We had good speed and we pulled away from them, not easily, but we were consistently faster than them," said Raikkonen.

"I don't know what would have happened if we were behind them, probably we couldn't have used our own speed because it is hard to overtake.

"There have been many times this year when we feel we had more speed than we have been able to show because we were stuck behind another car and not been able to overtake.

"So the benefit of making good starts made a big difference and it was nice to have a good start with both cars because it hasn't been our strongest point this year.

"It shows that we are doing things right and that the car is not too bad."

Ferrari has rarely been able to threaten Mercedes in qualifying this season and its lower grid slots have hampered its ability to make progress on Sunday.

"It's true that when we start as we started in Hungary, in the open air, the car is giving you more chance," said Ferrari team boss Maurizio Arrivabene.

"At the back conserving the tyres is quite hard, but it happens sometimes that we are at the back and our consumption is higher. Today we were in front and it was OK."