Kimi Raikkonen was unhappy after a difficult Friday practice day, saying that he felt his Alfa Romeo didn’t handle all that well. Both Alfa Romeo drivers struggled for pace in Friday practice, with Kimi Raikkonen finishing FP2 in P11 and 1.5 seconds off the pace of the frontrunners. This was actually a late improvement, as both Alfas had languished in the bottom quarter of the field for most of Friday.
Kimi had visibly struggled with his car on track, including an off track moment at Turn 7. Flinging his car into the left hander, the car wobbled and refused to stick. As a result, Raikkonen had to scamper across the gravel to avoid spinning and said afterwards that the handling just wasn’t there for him: “Quite a difficult day and we had issues here and there. The car was not that easy and the handling wasn’t good.”
“At the end of FP2 we understood the car a bit better, but we still have a lot of work to do for qualifying. We have some upgrades and some new things to learn and we’ll see what we can do.”
Speaking about his minor off, he said: “I went off at Turn 7, it happens when you push. We have work to do before Saturday.”
Alfa Romeo come to Barcelona having had to make changes to their front wing after Raikkonen was disqualified from the Azerbaijan qualifying session. This was due to his front wing deflecting more than the permitted 5mm when a 60N load is applied to the ends of the front wing.
Kimi Raikkonen’s team boss Frederic Vasseur explained the issue which Alfa Romeo is having with the tyres: “The teams that struggled in Baku warming up the tyres have no problem here. For us it’s the other way around.” In other words, the rear tyres on the Alfa Sauber get too hot.”
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