A downbeat Kimi Räikkönen has said he can’t be happy with his qualifying effort for the 2018 Monaco Grand Prix after setting the fourth fastest time.
Räikkönen’s lap-time of 1:11.266 was over four-tenths-of-a-second slower than pole-sitter Daniel Ricciardo, with Sebastian Vettel and Lewis Hamilton also beating Räikkönen’s time.
Räikkönen, who started the event from pole-position last year, has put some of his struggles down to Pirelli’s Hypersoft tyres.
“Today we struggled a bit to make the tyres work straightaway in the first two corners, get them into the correct temperature window and get the car to turn where we wanted,” said Kimi. “During the lap they seemed to improve, but here at Monaco, if you are not 100 per cent sure of how it’s going to be in Turn 1, then you lack a bit of confidence.
“Obviously, we cannot be totally happy with this result, we wanted to be higher up the time sheet, but this what we have got today.”
Despite being unhappy with his qualifying, Kimi remains aware that anything can happen on the streets of Monte Carlo.
“The race is a different story. Usually it’s very tricky to overtake here, but in the past a lot of things happened. We’ll try to stay out of any trouble, make the right decisions and do the right things at the right moment”.
