Kimi Raikkonen has said that he was "surprised" by his second-place finish in qualifying at the Italian Grand Prix.

Lewis Hamilton took pole position, but Ferrari driver Raikkonen finished 0.05s ahead of Sebastian Vettel to claim second.

"I think if we look now we probably surprised ourselves a little bit," Raikkonen told reporters.

"Obviously we expected a strong weekend but we knew this place wasn't going to be our strongest. In the end the car turned out to be pretty good in qualifying conditions, we had many good laps.

"It's been a while so it's nice to be here, especially at a home race for us and our best qualifying performance for us this year as a team. We'll try to give it a good go tomorrow and get a good result not just for ourselves but all our fans and the Ferrari people who are behind us."

The qualifying result was Raikkonen's best since the 2013 Chinese Grand Prix.