Raikkonen: blistering tyres 'not a big disaster'

Kimi Raikkonen minimises the tyre-related issues he suffered during free practice for the Belgian Grand Prix, after the Ferrari driver reported blisters on his soft Pirellis when doing long runs in the afternoon.

The Finn, who renewed his contract for 2016 earlier this week, clocked the fourth and fifth fastest times at Spa, while Ferrari was outpaced by Mercedes and Red Bull across both sessions.

The Italian squad actually split its Friday programme, with Raikkonen carrying out his race simulation on Pirelli’s yellow-banded softer compound and team-mate Sebastian Vettel on the white-walled mediums.

Tyres have been a much talked about topic at Spa-Francorchamps since pacesetter Nico Rosberg suffered a "shocking" blow-out in the afternoon. Though far less spectacular, Raikkonen also had to deal with his own troubles in that field.

“We’ve had a little bit of blistering,” he said. “It’s in the front so I mean it’s not ideal but it’s not a big disaster you know, you can do a lot of things for it.”

With three session stoppages on the opening day of free practice, most teams were not able to go through their traditional Friday items. But this does not seem to have fazed the unflappable Finn.

“There were so many red flags but it’s the same for everybody. Apart form that, we did our runs.

“We try to do a good tomorrow and then obviously see what we can do on Sunday but it’s not been too bad so far.”

Click here for Friday's gallery of the Belgian Grand Prix

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