Kimi Raikkonen was left to rue running out of laps as the Lotus driver finished second to championship leader Sebastian Vettel in Sunday’s German Grand Prix at the Nurburgring.

The Finn finished just 1.008 seconds behind Vettel with teammate Romain Grosjean third.

Raikkonen, from the Enstone-based outfit, stays in third position in the drivers’ championship with 116 points, but closed the gap on second-placed Fern-ando Alonso to seven points.

“We had a pretty good last stint of the race, but the cars are close on performance so it’s difficult to overtake,” said Raikkonen.

“Maybe some more laps would have helped us, but the race is only 60 laps so you have to do your best with that.

“After my first stop I was stuck behind a Mercedes for a while, but once I was past the car was pretty good.

“After the safety car three of us were able to pull away, but we were too close on speed to change the order.

“It was a good day for the team. Of course, we wanted to win; we couldn’t, but we did score the most points here.

The warmer temperatures helped, so let’s hope for more hot weather in Budapest.”

Grosjean added: “After some difficult races, everything went right and it was pretty special when I was leading the race and returning to the podium is naturally a good thing.

“My car felt great on the first stint with the soft tyres and it’s clear that the summer weather really suits us.

“Hopefully we’ll have a long summer now in Europe!

Letting Kimi past at the end of the race was the sensible thing to do as we were on different strategies.

“He had more of a chance of going for the win than I did at that point. “We didn’t know which tyre would be the best at the end of the race.”

DRIVERS’ CHAMPIONSHIP

1 S Vettel 157pts, 2 F Alonso 123, 3 K Raikkonen 116, 4 L Hamilton 99, 5 M Webber 93, 6 N Rosberg 84, 7 F Massa 57, 8 R Grosjean 41, 9 P Di Resta 36, 10 J Button 33.

CONSTRUCTORS Championship

1 Red Bull 250, 2 Mercedes 183, 3 Ferrari 180, 4 Lotus 157, 5 Force India 59, 6 McLaren 49, 7 Toro Rosso 24, 8 Sauber 7, 9 Williams 0, 10 Marussia 0, 11 Caterham 0.