Kimi Räikkönen disappointed with third place
Kimi Räikkönen may have beaten his teammate, but he was disappointed not to have finished better than third. Sebastian Vettel preferred to save a set of tires and could therefore be satisfied with fourth place on the grid.
Ferrari has shown since the beginning of the season that it can be fast, but its reliability has prevented it from posing a greater threat to Mercedes. Today, during the first run, it was indeed Kimi Räikkönen who topped the time sheets. He could legitimately hope to get his first pole position since the 2008 French Grand Prix. But it wasn’t to be due to a mistake during his second attempt: « It’s more of a disappointment than anything else: today, we had the opportunity to do better. I don’t know if pole was possible, but we certainly could have easily been second. In the second-to-last corner, I went wide and lost a lot of time. »
He will still be able to console himself by finishing ahead of his teammate, who had decided to gamble everything on a single attempt in Q3 to have an extra set of tires for the race. But it was not exceptional, and the German had to settle for 4th place: « I don’t think I deserved to be in the top 3 today. We saved tires. So we will start on super softs tomorrow. I thought I could do it in the last lap, but my only attempt wasn’t special. I asked too much of the tires at the beginning of the lap and made a few small mistakes here and there, costing me a lot of time. In the end, my lap wasn’t that good, and that’s how it is. We can’t do anything about it. »
But like the start of the season, the Ferrari drivers will be counting on a good start and a strong race pace to disrupt Nico Rosberg’s triumphant march. Except that Daniel Ricciardo’s Red Bull will certainly come to disrupt their plans…
