Scuderia Ferrari driver Kimi Raikkonen admits that qualifying fourth for the 2017 Spanish Grand Prix “hurts” due to the fact of how close the Maranello team came to taking pole position on Saturday, but says he can only blame himself for the qualifying outcome. Kimi has looked competitive all weekend and topped Saturday morning’s practice session, before edging ahead of teammate Sebastian Vettel in Q1. He was the quickest Ferrari after the initial runs of Q3, too, but eventually finished 0.3s down on Lewis Hamilton’s eventual pole position benchmark.
The Finnish driver believes little errors were to blame for his failure to join Sebastian Vettel, who missed out by just 0.051s, in challenging for pole position in Barcelona: “I struggled for whatever reason to put a decent lap, all the corners, together in qualifying. I thought I had a lot of speed but I never really managed to make a good lap out of it. It’s disappointing, OK, it’s fourth place, but being so close it hurts a bit.” – Kimi said, as reported by Tuttosport.
“It’s nothing new, tomorrow we try again. The car has been good, but it has been a bit tricky with the conditions, but that’s the same for everybody. The car has been working pretty well, I’m happy with that, but it’s a bit disappointing doing small mistakes here and there and never really putting a good lap in.”
When asked about what is needed to be done in order to prevent those small mistakes, Kimi Raikkonen replied: “Drive better! Don’t make those mistakes. There’s no secret. Obviously when you make those mistakes and the conditions are calmer you get away with a lot more. But when you have these conditions and you get it a bit wrong it’s hard to get it back. I’m disappointed I didn’t get a better result I’m happy with how we’ve been running. We still suffered a but from that but, apart from that, things have been running smoothly, the car feels good, so it’s up to me to make it better.” – Scuderia Ferrari’s Finnish driver concluded.
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