Kimi Raikkonen is more confident about Ferrari's pace than he was after the German Grand Prix, following some encouraging results in testing at Jerez in Spain this week.

The world champion was baffled about Ferrari's fall from form at Hockenheim, where Lewis Hamilton was comfortably clear of the opposition to take a dominant victory.

And although Raikkonen remains unsure about where his team currently stand compared to McLaren, he thinks they have got to the bottom of whatever it was that went wrong in Germany.

Speaking about his feelings after completing his running at Jerez, Raikkonen: "We have tried many things and we have a better understanding at least. So the car is better now than it was yesterday, but we don't know if it will be the same thing in the next race. There are many question marks still, but we are more happy and more positive."

Raikkonen would not elaborate, however, on what Ferrari have discovered as part of their post-Hockenheim analysis.

"We were not quick," he said when asked what went wrong. "So we looked to see how we can improve it and how we ended up in the situation in the first place."

McLaren's recent form appears to suggest that the team have edged ahead of their rivals in terms of out-and-out pace, but Raikkonen is far from despondent about his own title chances.

"We are not any more in the lead of the championship, but that's only been for one race," he said. "Hopefully we can get the car back like it was in the previous races and we should be okay.

"There are many races to go, but for sure McLaren have been strong in the last two races. So we need to get the package right again and try to win races. There is a long way to go."

Speaking about Hungary, he added: "McLaren last year were very strong there compared to us, but it is like the Monaco circuit and we were quite strong there this year. So hopefully we can challenge them and try to win the races."

Raikkonen also dismissed rumours that he is close to deciding whether to retire at the end of 2009 or commit to a new deal.

"I still have next year to go," he explained. "I always said I have next year still a contract with Ferrari, and we will see what we do after that."