'There was a lot more to come' - Raikkonen

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Kimi Raikkonen "felt there was a lot more to come" from his qualifying performance after finishing sixth in a rain-hit session at the Austrian Grand Prix.

After Ferrari impressed by reaching Q3 on the supersoft tyre rather than using the ultrasoft for its fastest laps - ensuring it starts on the supersofts on Sunday - rain started to fall ahead of the final part of the session. In the wet conditions, Raikkonen was only able to qualify sixth and he admits the result was a bit of an anticlimax having expected to challenge higher up.

"I think the car has been working really well all weekend, especially this morning and in qualifying but conditions changed in the last qualifying," Raikkonen said. "In Q2 we had a very good feeling, we also went out with the supersoft tyres also, just to make sure we could easily go through to Q3.

"The feeling is good with the car, even in the wet it worked pretty well. In the end it’s disappointing to finish 6^th because I felt there was a lot more to come, but for a lot of little issues, or a lot of little reasons we didn’t go faster. We need to look at ourselves and that that place but it’s not too bad, as other guys are getting penalised so we’ll see what we can do.

"It has been quite nice, the car has been behaving well weekend, so I expect it to be OK tomorrow.

"I feel I could have pushed a lot harder, but it was hard to know where the grip was or wasn't. The timing could always be better, if you’re the last to start the last lap it’s better but the result is what it is, and it’s the best we could do.

"This is where we’ll start tomorrow, but like I said I’m sure we could have done a better job if many small things had been slightly better. I think the end result could have been good but, like I said, the end result is not a disaster but it will be a long and difficult race tomorrow."

Raikkonen will start from fourth on the grid as a result of penalties for team-mate Sebastian Vettel and Nico Rosberg, and is hoping the Ferrari strategy will leave him in good shape.

"I ran [the supersofts] in the morning and they were pretty good. The lap wasn’t perfect but we were expecting it to be enough to go through to Q3. Is it going to be a big advantage? We’ll see tomorrow, it depends a lot on the weather.

"I think the tyre life will be a challenge for everybody, whoever makes the tyres last longer, in both compounds, will make a big benefit in the race, but let’s see how the weather will be and everything plays out tomorrow."

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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.