Raikkonen encouraged despite losing out to Ricciardo

Kimi Raikkonen says he was encouraged by the performance of his Ferrari despite losing out to Daniel Ricciardo for third place in qualifying for the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

The Finn was third after the first runs in Q3, having looked very strong in the first sector during qualifying. However, Ricciardo managed to snatch third place by just 0.015s with his final lap and Raikkonen says his car was feeling good enough to beat the Red Bull.

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“We had it for a while and the last lap was pretty OK but was nothing like very good," Raikkonen said when asked if third place was possible. "So the difference was very small so for sure that amount you can find in one braking here or there, but if you get sideways you lose that easily.

"It was there but this is what we’ve got so we’ve got to be happy with that. The car has been behaving well, it’s not an easy place to do a good lap so it’s not ideal but we tried at least.”

With Ricciardo and team-mate Max Verstappen starting on the supersoft tyre compared to the ultrasoft for the rest of the top ten, Raikkonen is not expecting to have a major advantage off the line despite being on a softer compound.

“It’s hard to say. I don’t think there’s an awful lot of difference between those two tyres but who knows? I think it’s more important to make a good start, obviously there should be a small difference but the distance is very short so we should try to make a good start and go from there.”