Kimi Räikkönen has described qualifying for the 2018 Spanish Grand Prix as “not the ideal one” as the Finn lines up fourth, behind his team-mate and both Mercedes AMG Petronas Motorsport cars.
Räikkönen made a mistake on his first Q3 attempt that left him well off the front-runners pace, but he swapped unconventionally to the slower Soft tyres to improve to a 1:16.612 to end up on the second row of the grid for tomorrow’s race.
“It was a tricky qualifying, not the ideal one”, said Kimi. “In Q3, on my first attempt with the Supersofts, I made a mistake in turn 1 and went wide; obviously this affected my lap. At that point, I was in a position where I had nothing to lose, so we decided to try something else.
“The Soft tires felt pretty good in Q2 so we decided to use them in my last run. In the end we managed to do a decent job, but obviously we are not satisfied with the result.”
Scuderia Ferrari replaced Räikkönen’s power unit before qualifying following a failure in Friday’s second practice. But the lost track time means Kimi heads into the race unsure of his race pace.
“It’s difficult to predict what will happen in the race and it’s a bit of an unknown for me, considering I couldn’t do the long runs yesterday. We’ll try to make a good start and see how the race pans out”.
