Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsFerrari

Raikkonen unhappy despite Ferrari showing

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Kimi Raikkonen says he is still unhappy with the handling of his Ferrari despite impressive lap times during practice for the Bahrain Grand Prix.

While Mercedes was fastest in qualifying trim, both Raikkonen and team-mate Sebastian Vettel were quicker than Nico Rosberg on the soft tyres when carrying out long runs in FP2. Raikkonen says he isn't aware how competitive Ferrari is but his own feeling inside the car wasn't a good one on Friday.

"I have not seen any lap times," Raikkonen said. "Obviously it is still not as good as I hoped. It was a bit tricky this evening with the set-up. I was struggling in a few places and we have to see what we can do about that. Let’s wait and see.

"It is okay [on the softs], but we still have some handling problems and I am not so happy about it. Obviously we have to look and work on some details and hopefully improve them for tomorrow and be a bit more happy."

After issues in qualifying on a number of occasions this season, Raikkonen admits a strong Saturday is key to him challenging for victory this weekend.

"It makes it a much easier race. We try to work this evening and make the car handling a little bit better and hopefully then we can do a good job tomorrow."

Asked about Rosberg's comments building up Ferrari's chances, Raikkonen replied: "I am saying nothing... they can talk."

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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.