Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsFerrari

Ferrari 'got the timing wrong' - Raikkonen

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Kimi Raikkonen says Ferrari got its timing wrong as he dropped out of qualifying in Q2 at Sepang.

With Ferrari showing impressive pace throughout the weekend, hopes were high that the team could take the fight to Mercedes in qualifying. Sebastian Vettel managed to do so - missing out on pole by 0.074s - but Raikkonen didn't make it through to the final part of qualifying having failed to set a quick enough time before rain hit.

With a number of cars queuing up at the end of the pit lane ahead of the start of Q2, Raikkonen - who got stuck behind Marcus Ericsson's Sauber - says Ferrari didn't get him out on track at the right time.

"We will see what happens in the race, but it was wrong time, simple as that," Raikkonen said. "I tried to overtake [Ericsson] because he was in front of me, I couldn’t slow down because there were people pushing me forward. In my mind, we just got the timing wrong.

"It doesn’t help to blame anyone, it is what it is. It is easier to say afterwards that we should have been waiting behind each other but the end result is this and whatever we do now doesn’t change it. It is unfortunate."

And Raikkonen admits he was expecting much more from his qualifying session having been so competitive all weekend.

"Much better than this, but the last qualifying was a bit different. We should have been much higher up but it doesn’t matter what we expect when this is the end result."

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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.