Raikkonen blames lock-up for missing Silverstone pole

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Kimi Raikkonen felt that he had the pace to be on pole position for the British Grand Prix in today's qualifying session at Silverstone.

"I think I had all the tools today to be faster," the Ferrari driver said after the chequered flag. "But I locked the front wheel into 16 a bit on the last lap.

"To be sure, that gave away enough time to be on front. But then that's how it goes.

"We had first and last sector but in the middle obviously I think I had a small moment on the first try, the first set, into turn 7, so I took it a bit easier.

"I was still gaining but I’m sure there were places to gain a tenth easily but obviously it didn’t happen today, so this is what we got.

"It was close, but third is not too bad," he insisted.

Starting from third is the same as last week in Austria. That race saw Raikkonen get a terrific launch off the grid to split the two Mercedes ahead of him into the first corner.

Qualifying: Hamilton takes record sixth pole at Silverstone

The Finn is clearly hoping for a similarly explosive start to this week's Grand Prix to insert himself between Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel.

"I don’t plan to do anything different," he said. "Obviously we try to make a good start as well as we can but there are things that you will never be able to plan.

"You do it what you think the right outcome might be different that you expect but that’s how it goes sometimes. Try to make a good start and go from there, see what we can come up with.

"I think I’ve got a good car and my car should be good tomorrow," Raikkonen said. "Hopefully it’s a close fight, not easy to overtake as always but we will see what we can do and so far it’s been OK.

"Obviously it’s hot and it will not be an easy race with the tyres, so I think we might see a few different things happening there, but we’re aiming for the top for sure."

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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.