- Brazilian Grand Prix - Qualifying
Raikkonen struggles with limited set-up time after engine issue
Kimi Raikkonen said his lost practice time on Saturday morning left him guessing with his set-up ahead of qualifying for the Brazilian Grand Prix.
Raikkonen suffered an engine failure early in final practice and then faced wet conditions at the start of qualifying with next to no set-up time. He said ninth on the grid before Pastor Maldonado's penalty was not a bad result, but feels the car was capable of more.
"We didn't get a single lap this morning," Raikkonen said. "Yesterday in first practice we didn't really get anything so the car was pretty bad. We had to change it a lot since yesterday and it was purely guessing for qualifying because we didn't have many laps. In that way, okay, at least it was ninth. But with some running this morning we could have done some proper setup work and we could have been in a better position."
He also only had one attempt at a qualifying lap on fresh medium tyres in Q3 after using a set in both Q1 and Q2 to get through.
"It was not the easiest thing after this morning but at least we got through and second qualifying was fine and we had only one set of new tyres so it wasn't very easy for the last session."
Raikkonen will not get a grid penalty for his engine change as his team fitted the Renault V8 from his win in Abu Dhabi and his most recent race in Austin instead of fitting a new one that would have taken him over his eight-engine allocation. When asked if he was at all concerned, he simply replied: "It should be okay."