Raikkonen laments Ferrari's power deficit

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Kimi Raikkonen pointed the finger at the lack of power from the Ferrari engine as the reason why he and his team mate Sebastian Vettel were unable to compete with Mercedes and Red Bull in qualifying for the United States Grand Prix on Saturday.

"We just have to go faster around the lap," he said after putting the car into fifth place on the grid for tomorrow's race.

"There were no big issues but we just need more downforce, more power to go faster around the lap. It’s not a particular thing, it’s many things, but the balance of the car was okay, we just weren’t fast around the lap.

"We have to go faster," he stressed again. "We know that, but it’s not very easy to fix. If it was we would have fixed it already. Tomorrow it’s a new day, hopefully in the race well be fighting.

"The only team that I know off, it’s Mercedes, they can turn up their power and it seems to make a big difference in the end," he added. "I don't know what the Renault is doing. We run our stuff in qualifying, it’s always the same, there’s nothing magic.

"The tyres are behaving as we were expecting, the conditions are what they are, windy in a few places, but overall today it’s been good, compared to yesterday, it’s just the end result is not very good, not what we wanted, but it’s the reality today. We try to work and do our best tomorrow."

Despite the evident disappointment, starting on the third row of the grid on supersoft tyres while three of the four cars ahead of him are on the slower soft compound could mean that Raikkonen has the edge when the lights go out on Sunday.

"The start is the easiest place to make positions up," he agreed. "It depends a lot on who’s running soft tyres, one of them starts on a different tyre from us.

"How it will pan out, if we have the speed, normally we’re a bit better in the race than in qualifying. Will that happen tomorrow? I hope so and we can be up there fighting with them. We’ll see that 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.