Heading into qualifying, Kimi Raikkonen knew that he would drop five places on the grid following a gearbox change, and despite improving his car, the Finn could only qualify sixth, meaning an eleventh place start for Sunday’s Monaco Grand Prix.
The Scuderia Ferrari driver admitted to having a tricky weekend so far, with the gearbox penalty not helping his cause, but Raikkonen is looking to advance during the race and try and get the best result possible.
“The whole weekend has been quite tricky, but this morning the car felt a bit better and for qualifying we improved even more,” said Raikkonen.
“For sure we did the right things, but we struggled to make the tires work as we wanted; they were too much on the edge of the grip, the rear was slipping or the front was sliding and in a track like this when you don’t have a consistent good grip you lose a lot of time because of that.
“Obviously we are not happy of where we end up and the penalty due to the gearbox change for sure doesn’t help, but we’ll try to make the best out of it.
“We cannot predict what will happen tomorrow, for sure the race it’s not going to be easy, but usually many things happen here, we’ll try to get the most, to do the right calls in case of Safety Car and to take the right decisions.”
