Kimi Raikkonen has admitted that qualifying is his Achilles' heel in Formula 1 – but he has insisted that he is convinced Ferrari can win all the remaining races on the 2008 calendar.

The defending world champion has been outpaced four-one by Ferrari team-mate Felipe Massa thus far in qualifying this year, and his pole position in Barcelona just over a fortnight ago was his first top spot since the Belgian Grand Prix last September. Though his racecraft has nevertheless enabled him to rack up 35 points from the opening five races of the current campaign – six more than any of his rivals – he acknowledged that Saturday afternoon is an area he needs to work on.

“It wasn't the best qualifying for me,” Raikkonen acknowledged of lining up fourth on the starting grid in Istanbul, “but it has been my weakest point. We had a bit more fuel than the others which is one reason, but also the lap wasn't as good as I wanted.

“I think it all started on Friday when we had a problem. We had a difficult weekend and I didn't have a very good start – the inside line is never going to be as good as the clean side. I got to the side of him [Heikki Kovalainen] on braking, then I got a little bit squeezed on the inside and I tried to slow down and get behind him – because otherwise we would have hit hard – but he just turned in a little bit. I hit the rear wheel of Heikki and the bottom of the end-plate came off.

“The unfortunate thing for both of us is that I broke the front wing and he had a puncture. It didn't help either of us. We chose to use the front wing for the whole race because it takes too long to change it, and it wasn't too bad, but it never helps as the end of the wing was damaged. It is difficult to say how much better or different it would have been with the proper wing, but for sure it doesn't help you.”

That may have been so, but Raikkonen nonetheless succeeded in setting the fastest lap of the race as he endeavoured to chase down Lewis Hamilton in second place. His charge was not facilitated by having been passed around the outside by BMW-Sauber's Robert Kubica as he and Kovalainen held each other up into turn one at the start, but he still closed right onto the back of the Briton's McLaren-Mercedes at the close, even if he could not live with Massa at the Brazilian's favourite track.

“I lost some places [at the start],” the Finn mused. “It all started to go wrong at that point. If I'd chosen now I would have gone onto the harder tyres at the first pit-stop, but it's too late. I think the first set of softs worked pretty well for me, but the second set – when it was new – was quite difficult and it was at a point when we needed to be faster. That's one of the reasons that we lost second place, but anyhow, it's been a difficult weekend.

“It's always difficult to overtake but we tried, we tried to push him, but unfortunately we couldn't get close enough. We knew that we had good straight-line speed on the back straight, but if you don't get close enough... I was always catching him but I was too far away, so there was nothing we could do.

“This weekend I was never really where I wanted to be and third place was the best we could do, but at least we got some good points. Sometimes you need to be happy with what you get, and this was one of those days. I am still happy that we didn't lose too many points, and we need to have a better weekend at the next race.”