Kimi Raikkonen's race engineer Chris Dyer believes it was only natural that the Finn took time to hit form for Ferrari.

Although Raikkonen won on his debut for the team in Australia, he then endured a long fallow period prior to his Magny-Cours victory - being outpaced by team-mate Felipe Massa and drifting back into a distant fourth in the standings.

The Finn came under increasing pressure in the media, especially as he had replaced Michael Schumacher at Ferrari.

There was speculation that the team was unhappy with his performance and even rumours that Ferrari wanted to replace him with Williams' Nico Rosberg next season.

But Dyer said there had been no such dramas within the team, and that Ferrari had always expected Raikkonen to need time to acclimatise.

"To be honest, I don't think we've ever had any problems with Kimi fitting into the team and the way we've worked with Kimi or the way Kimi's worked with us," he said.

"It's not something we had a problem with and we had to improve.

"It takes time to understand him as a driver, for him to understand our car and the way our systems work.

"I just think it's part of the natural process of a driver coming to a team and settling into that team, and the team settling into the driver.

"It's just a constant process of trying to understand him better, trying to understand the car better and get the most out of both of them.

"I don't think we've made any huge steps in any single area, it's just a little bit of improvement in all areas and we see the results."

Dyer added that the press focus on Raikkonen's run of poor results made his Magny-Cours turnaround even more satisfying.

"There's been a lot of pressure especially on Kimi, I think, about the fact that we weren't winning, so yeah, it's more satisfying to win here than it was in Melbourne and I hope we can continue with a few more before the end of the year," he said.

Source: ITV.com/F1

Lewis Hamilton says that Ferrari was not as superior in the French Grand Prix as its 30s winning margin over the McLaren suggested.

The British rookie ran close behind Kimi Raikkonen in the opening stages, but his three stop strategy meant he visited the pits one more time than the Ferraris, and ultimately finished 32s adrift.

But after the race Hamilton insisted that his strategy had made Ferrari appear more dominant than it really was.

"I don't think they were as quick as they looked today, not that much faster," said Hamilton.

"I don't know what times they were doing, but there was obviously a big gap and traffic and strategy had a lot to do with that."

He believed his decision to drive conservatively once he realised victory was out of reach hadfurtherinflated Ferrari's advantage.

"At the end, when I came out of my third pit stop I knew that I was 20 seconds already behind so there was no point in wrenching the neck out of the engine," Lewis said.

Hamilton does not think McLaren has any cause for concern despite Ferrari interrupting its run of dominant performances.

"I don't think it is worrying," he said.

"I just think it shows they have made a good step forward and they obviously had a very good strategy which worked slightly better than ours today."

Source: ITV.com/F1