Raikkonen has openly admitted he has struggled with the car, and in Austin it was the same story, “Here was again one of the most difficult weekends. Japan was similar – we fight with understeer the whole weekend and whatever we do we can’t seem to get rid of it. Then you can expect in the race to destroy the front tyres.”

“Obviously I hate the situation the way it is and the way things are going, and I cannot solve it by myself. To try to drive slowly in certain places didn’t make any difference [to the life of the front tyres] so I don’t understand it really,” he said.

“Wherever we finished it’s pretty disappointing. Not being able to solve certain issues is frustrating. Hopefully something comes up and we find what the issues are. I appreciate some help and obviously we try to help each other to fix these issues, but if we knew the issue it would be easier to solve,” he added.

Felipe Massa, who until last year was Alonso’s Ferrari teammate, suggested recently that Raikkonen is obviously struggling mentally alongside the Spaniard.

“Maybe I am going mad,” Raikkonen sarcastically hit back in Austin. “Losing my mind. He can say what he wants, but I know the true story.”

But that doesn’t mean he knows the solution. So with the quadruple world champion Sebastian Vettel coming on board for 2015, intense pressure might now be building on Raikkonen’s shoulders to quickly improve.

“Positive pressure,” insisted boss Mattiacci, according to the Spanish daily Marca. “It is important when you have pressure to always approach it positively.”

“We know we have a problem and we have to keep working on it,” added the Ferrari team principal