- Bahrain Grand Prix - Qualifying
Car feeling better than ever - Raikkonen
Kimi Raikkonen is more confident about scoring a good result than he has been all season after qualifying for the Bahrain Grand Prix on Saturday night.
Raikkonen was sixth fastest but will start from fifth on the grid once Daniel Ricciardo's 10-place grid penalty has been factored in. Despite struggling to show his true pace so far this weekend, he said the car feels better now than it has at any point over the last two races.
"Yesterday the long runs felt pretty difficult but suddenly on the soft tyres it felt pretty nice," he said. "I think we made the right changes to the car for today so I expect that it should be pretty okay, but I don't know whether it is fast enough to be fighting with those [other cars for third] and obviously we have to get through the first corner and the first lap.
"We are only going to see [if we can do] that tomorrow, but I am more confident overall with how things have gone than at any race before this year. Hopefully we will get through the first corners, get a good start and go from there."
Raikkonen could not explain his difficulties with the car during Friday practice, but is said new parts that the team has brought to the F14 T have helped his feeling with the front end of the car.
"The funny thing is that it's been feeling pretty okay in one or two corners and then suddenly it was feeling very odd, so I don't know why we had yesterday a very difficult day. This morning was a bit better already but I didn't drive so well. Obviously we had two outlaps in the morning and then it's very difficult to say where you are, but the feeling has been better with the car.
"The parts that I wanted have definitely helped and now in qualifying it felt more like we expected and wanted. It's definitely the right direction but obviously we are still not where we want to be. But we have all the people and we know what we are doing so it will just take time to get where we want."
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