Gap to Rosberg reflects Ferrari pace - Raikkonen

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Kimi Raikkonen says the one-second deficit to Nico Rosberg in qualifying is a fair reflection of Ferrari's pace at the Singapore Grand Prix.

Rosberg took pole position by over half a second from Daniel Ricciardo, with Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen lining up on row two. Raikkonen was demoted from third after his first run in Q3 to fifth at the end of the session, and when asked if the gap to Rosberg - which was 0.956s - or qualifying with was more concerning, the Finn replied: "I don’t really care what it is right now.

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"We are 5^th and we’ve seen that before in some races and in some races not. They’ve been strong here and unfortunately this is what we’ve got today. The car was behaving pretty decently, apart from obviously lacking a bit of grip overall.

"But there weren’t issues that we could have fixed to suddenly go faster, apart from adding overall grip. The first lap in Q3 was a good lap and I knew I had to try a bit too much to go faster in the second lap and it didn’t pay off. This is where you ended up."

Raikkonen was over 0.6s clear of Carlos Sainz's Toro Rosso in sixth place, but he says the lack of threat from behind does not mean Ferrari can take risks with its strategy on Sunday.

"I think we’ll base our strategy on what will be the fastest way from start to finish and that’s what we always do. There’s nothing we can suddenly do differently that will make it fastest. We can easily calculate what is the fastest race for us and that’s what we’re aiming to do.

"If something happens – Safety Cars or whatever – then you need to change, but we can only do our fastest and hopefully it’s good enough to gain some positions. I think tomorrow our car will be good, but who knows?"

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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.