Kimi Raikkonen says he was surprised by tyre problems on his final qualifying attempt on Saturday, describing it as “a s**t lap”.
While the two Ferraris had been comfortably second quickest behind Mercedes throughout the weekend, Raikkonen struggled to match his Q2 pace during the final part of qualifying and ended up sixth on the grid. Williams emerged as a stronger challenger during qualifying and got both cars ahead of the Finn, but Raikkonen says all of the lap time was lost in the opening sector.
“I just had difficulties in the first three corners on the last try and I lost so much time in corner three basically,” Raikkonen said. “I was a bit surprised because the car had been behaving very well and then the last set was not so easy there for some reason. It was pretty messed up the lap that time, obviously I couldn’t catch it up.
“Maybe I couldn’t go exactly as fast as the people ahead which was a Sauber but it was as surprise because we did used tyres and it was better. The first time we had any issues so it’s a bit of a mystery but it happened and it’s bad timing but it is what it is.”
And Raikkonen says it is frustrating to not be able to highlight exactly what was wrong during the opening part of the lap.
“We have had a pretty OK weekend but surprisingly enough on the last try something wasn’t correct. I’m not complaining that it wasn’t correct but I had a s**t lap basically in that one area for reasons I don’t know.
“It could be me, it could be something else, but I’m just disappointed with myself and not anything else that it ended up this way again. Obviously it makes life much more difficult to start in that position but tomorrow’s another day and I expect the car to be good in the race but it doesn’t make life easy to start in that position.”
Click here for the full report from qualifying
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