• Italian Grand Prix - FP2

Lotus is not fastest at Monza - Raikkonen

ESPN Staff
September 7, 2012 « D'Ambrosio happy with first day back | Car looks strong after practice - di Resta »
Kimi Raikkonen is pleased that conditions are set to be hot and dry this weekend © Sutton Images
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Kimi Raikkonen believes Lotus will find it difficult to challenge for a place at the front of the grid for the Italian Grand Prix.

Having been one of the favourites for victory at Spa with a double DRS system, Lotus was unable to run the device and Raikkonen finished third. With Monza not suiting the system either Lotus opted against running it again, but in the second practice session Raikkonen was sixth quickest, just 0.214s off the fastest time. However, he said with such a closely-matched field he would need to have a strong qualifying session to get in the mix at the front.

"We are not fastest for sure here," Raikkonen said. "We did not expect to be fastest either. I think after the last race it was bit tricky so it wasn't too bad [today], but for sure it will be difficult to be really on top in qualifying. But we have to try to do the best we can; I think it will be close. There's not many corners so there's not going to be big differences between teams, it will be very close on times so then we'll have to have a good qualifying to get quite high up."

Raikkonen did admit that Lotus could be slightly helped by the weather, however, with hot and dry conditions expected for the whole weekend.

"It's better, we'd rather take the hot temperature. We cannot say that it's always better; sometimes it might be worse. But probably we would be more happy with the handling and the race pace if it's hot."

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