FP1 on Friday and FP3 on Saturday had kicked off at 1pm and 2pm local respectively, while FP2 on Friday, qualifying on Saturday and the race on Sunday all have a 5pm starting time.

And the significant weather change between afternoon and evening sessions was what, according to Raikkonen's teammate Sebastian Vettel, led to Ferrari not getting the maximum out of qualifying.

"We were probably a bit too aggressive trying to anticipate the conditions tonight, got caught out a little bit - it was difficult, it was coming to us towards the end, shame the qualy didn't continue [further]," said Vettel, who had qualified fifth to Raikkonen's fourth.

"There's quite a big shift between afternoon and evening, the sun goes down, the track temperature goes down, I think everybody's trying to do the same thing and I think in that regard we probably went a bit too far."

Raikkonen, meanwhile, said he didn't think Ferrari had made a mistake in that area - but did say he considered the afternoon sessions too unrepresentative.

He explained: "We know, from every year, it obviously depends a bit on the weather, if it's very hot or not so hot during the daytime... it's a bit of a waste of time, the daytime sessions.

"We have to know what will happen for the evening, work with the car, make the right choices to make it work actually when it matters - and not on the daytime, when it's hot.

"I hardly changed my car, during FP3, I knew it was not ideal in that time of the day - but I knew the places where it's going to improve, it's going to go into those directions - and for us we pretty much kept the car the same."