Kimi Räikkönen says he and his engineers will analyse what they learned at the Hockenheimring during Friday’s practice sessions and improve on Saturday, even though conditions are expected to be different.
The Scuderia Ferrari driver ended up sixth fastest in the morning session on Formula 1’s return to Germany after a year away, 0.742 seconds off the pace of Daniel Ricciardo, while the Finn was fifth fastest in the afternoon session, 0.342 seconds off Max Verstappen, and just 0.117 seconds off team-mate Sebastian Vettel.
Räikkönen hopes for another strong weekend for Ferrari but he admits that if track temperatures were to rise to similar levels on Sunday as they did on Friday, tyre management will play a big part in proceedings.
“Friday is the only day that we can use as a test,” said Räikkönen, “trying a lot of things and different solutions. It was a very normal day and later this evening we‘ll analyse what we have learned today and put things together for qualifying.
“Tomorrow the conditions might be a bit different from today and a bit more tricky. On Sunday if the weather stays warm like it was today, for sure it will be challenging for the tyres; it’s going to be more similar to Austria, with a limit on the tyres, and whoever makes the best job in managing them is going to have some advantage.
“So far we have been reasonably strong in most places, we’ll see how it goes here; it looks pretty close.”
