F1 News, Reports and Race Results

Raikkonen less than thrilled after missing out on pole

Given the slight cooling-off in Ferrari's recent form, you'd be forgiven for thinking that qualifying in second place for the Hungarian Grand Prix as part of a team 1-2 would be cause for celebration for Kimi Raikkonen.

Instead, the former world champion was seeing the glass half empty. He was not at all happy to have been pipped to pole position by his team mate Sebastian Vettel.

"Actually not too good," said Raikkonen when asked how the lap had felt. "The start was good and the end was not too bad.

"But then at the chicane I braked on the outside kerb and got loose, and really threw it away there.

"It was decent enough still for second place. But it's a bit disappointing," he sighed. "I felt I had it quite comfortably but couldn't really finish it."

After struggling at Silverstone, the Hungaroring is looking more suited to Ferrari's SF70H. After Saturday's qualifying, the team goes into the Grand Prix as hot favourites.

“If you purely look at lap times yes," agreed Raikkonen. "But if you look from yesterday, it wasn't the easiest day.

"Today definitely we've been pretty happy with things," he continued. "I managed to improve my car for the qualifying. I must say we are happy with how they are handling now.

"So far, so good," he summed up. "But tomorrow is going to be a long race and a hard battle so we have to keep going."

Hungary GP: Vettel claims pole and track record in qualifying

Ferrari's remarkable form in qualifying was every more astounding given a relatively undistinguished showing by their standards on Friday. Team principal Maurizio Arrivabene said that the big step forward had been down to hard work overnight.

"The guys, they were quite calm yesterday. They were working on the car knowing the potential. Yesterday night we were working until late to find the proper balance."

Part of that work involved dispatching development driver Antonio Giovinazzi to undertake simulator work back at the team's base in Fiorentino.

"Giovinazzi is part of the team, he is our third driver. He was contributing to those two positions, giving us a lot of information."

Giovinazzi's input benefited from having taken part in Friday's practice session with the Haas F1 Team. However, the 23=year-old had only completed eight laps in FP1 before crashing out.

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.