• Chinese Grand Prix - FP2

Raikkonen eyes strong race despite Friday struggle

ESPNF1 Staff
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Kimi Raikkonen struggled during Friday practice © Sutton Images
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Kimi Raikkonen is confident Lotus can score its best result of the season at the Chinese Grand Prix this weekend despite a poor showing in Friday practice.

Raikkonen was slowest in first practice after his session ended prematurely due to a DRS problem and was 13th fastest in second practice. But he is not fazed by Lotus' apparent lack of pace and is confident he will back on the pace on Saturday.

"It's not often that you have a perfect car on Friday and there are certain things we have to improve," Raikkonen said. "To be honest, it doesn't matter if you are the slowest car on Friday if you are fast for the rest of the weekend. We now just need to look at the information and change the usual things on the car to improve it.

"We're aiming for better results than what we've achieved from the last two weekends. For sure, we have some work to do on the car. We tried some different things with the set-up today so we have some information to look at, and we know there are certain areas where we have to improve."

Raikkonen's team-mate Romain Grosjean explained that the cooler temperatures in China were causing problems for the E20.

"We had strange conditions this morning and a little bit of a difficult session this afternoon to be honest," Grosjean added. "We're not where we would expect to be, partly due to the low temperature which we didn't expect. We'll analyse what's changed coming from two warm weekends to here where it's pretty cold and has changed the game. I'm sure we'll improve tomorrow, and of course if the weather changes again then everything will change."

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