The Finn outpaced his teammate Sebastian Vettel in all three practice sessions in Spain, including topping the latter, but made a series of "small mistakes" when it counted in qualifying.

Raikkonen felt pole was possible but ended up fourth quickest, 0.290s off the pace of pole-sitter Lewis Hamilton, who pipped Vettel by just 0.051s.

"[I need to] drive better - don't make those mistakes," said Raikkonen. "I struggled for whatever reason to put a decent lap, all the corners together in qualifying.

"I thought I had a lot of speed but I never really managed to make a good lap out of it. I ran wide already in Turn 1, but I managed to get out of it and I was still fast.

"Then in Turn 4 and 5 I just ran really wide and lost quite a bit of laptime there. Without those [mistakes] there was, for sure, enough laptime to challenge for the first place.

"It's a bit disappointing to make a mess out of it but we'll try tomorrow."

Despite missing out on a first pole in nine years - the French Grand Prix in 2008 was his last - Raikkonen is encouraged by Ferrari's pace and the performance of its Barcelona upgrade.

"Definitely we are close," said Raikkonen. "The car has been good. We have done our own stuff [update] – we have no control over what the others are doing.

"We have a solid package that we try to improve and bring small things here and there. Sometimes when it looks a lot different it doesn't mean you are one second faster.

"We've been quite happy with where we've been, especially with these conditions - usually it's not our strongest point so it was a good result today."