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Raikkonen: Mistake clouds true Ferrari pace

Kimi Raikkonen says he doesn't know how quick Ferrari is yet after making a mistake during FP2 for the United States Grand Prix.

The Finn ran wide at the penultimate corner on his first flying lap on supersoft tyres in the second practice session, catching the car as the rear got away from him out of Turn 18. While Raikkonen admits Ferrari didn't find a good set-up on the first day of running in Austin, he says the mistake clouds his true pace.

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"It was a bit difficult in first practice and also second, but obviously second looks worse because I went off on the new tyres and lost some of the lap time out of it," Raikkonen said. "We have to work on set-up and make it more where we want it to be, but apart from that it was just a normal Friday.

"We first have to sort out the car for tomorrow and the Mercedes looks to be stronger than the Red Bull, so I don’t think it’s too bad if we get the set-up where it should be.

"It was a bit of a difficult Friday and we didn’t get the set-up where we want, but sometimes it goes like that."

And Raikkonen says the set-up problems are only minor rather than anything which will have a big impact on the rest of Ferrari's weekend.

"It’s not full of trouble, you are trying to make a big story out of it. It’s the normal set-up work and sometimes you get it right and of course we only have a certain amount of tyres to get it right. We have some work to be done, but it’s usually the same on Friday so that’s it."

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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.