Kimi Raikkonen felt his qualifying session at Spa-Francorchamps on Saturday was particularly messy, with tyre vibrations coming and going throughout, which left him down in fourth when a front row slot was there for the taking.
The Finn has had the measure on his Scuderia Ferrari team-mate Sebastian Vettel for much of the weekend, but with the vibrations returned in the final session which, coupled with a mistake at turn nine on his final run, resulted in him falling behind the German and Valtteri Bottas.
“It was a messy qualifying: all the way through the session I had some vibrations in the car that kept coming and going,” said Raikkonen. “It’s hard to know how much they affected the lap time, but for sure it did not help.
“It’s very disappointing because so far the weekend had gone very smoothly. I felt we had all the tools to do well, the car was good and we had the speed. In the last run I was off to a good start, but then I started struggling with the tyre temperatures and made a mistake, got sideways at turn 9 and it was pretty much the end of it.
“Fourth position is not a disaster but it is far from what I wanted. It’s unfortunate, wrong time wrong place, but tomorrow is another day. It’s going to be quite tricky with the tyres for everybody: hopefully we’ll have a straightforward race and make the right decisions.”
