'Zero issues' for Raikkonen in practice, as Vettel falters

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Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen was actually sounding happy with his day at the office on Friday, following the conclusion of practice for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

The Finn finished the afternoon session second-fastest, just seven hundredths of a second behind top timesetter Daniel Ricciardo. While Raikkonen had his own share of lock-ups and run-offs during the day, he had no complaints.

"We didn't have any problems," he said afterwards in the paddock. "Absolutely zero issues.

"Things to improve, still, but yeah, wasn't too bad," he continued. "Obviously people write stuff but I wanted to have a different set-up."

As well as an impressive qualifying simulation, he was also happy with how the race distance runs had gone.

Ricciardo and Raikkonen looking racy on the streets of Baku in FP2

"It looked okay," Raikkonen confirmed. "Obviously it's difficult to say as I've not had chance to look at what the others are doing. But it felt pretty good."

He certainly had a better time of it for once than his team mate Sebastian Vettel, who finished FP2 outside the top ten after spinning at turn 15 during his flying lap.

Despite that, the four-time world champion wasn't sounding too worried about the outlook for the weekend.

"It is a tricky circuit, but it is the same for all of us," Vettel said. "I didn't get the laps together.

"But we can improve the car and tomorrow it should be okay," he added.

"Probably I struggle a little bit more than the others but I am not worried. Towards the end I had a good rhythm and was quite happy so I think we can improve for tomorrow."

"I was very happy with the long runs at the end so, it was okay. I think the car is fine."

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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.