Kimi Raikkonen felt mistakes during his qualifying runs cost him significant amounts of time as the Scuderia Ferrari driver was forced to settle for fourth on the grid for the Canadian Grand Prix.
The Finn was unable to put a clean lap together in either of his Q3 runs, which meant he ended up 0.793 seconds down on Lewis Hamilton’s pole setting time, with Raikkonen believing that he paid for those mistakes.
“Today it was a bit tricky: for whatever reason yesterday we had been a bit more comfortable,” said Raikkonen. “The car felt pretty OK, but we struggled to make the tyres work as we wanted.
“There was a lot of potential in the car, but I was not driving very well, and did not manage to put a good lap together. My last run was very poor, I made mistakes in the first and second corner and I paid the price for it.”
Raikkonen is hopeful to turn his fortune around on Sunday, with the Finn, a winner in Canada back in 2005 with the McLaren F1 Team, seeking his first podium finish at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve with his current team.
“Tomorrow it should be a different story,” said Raikkonen. “It’s going to be a long race and obviously a lot can happen; you never know here, it’s one of those places where things can change very quickly.
“We’ll try to make the best choices; we should have the speed, let’s see.”
