After qualifying in second place for the Italian Grand Prix, with a time only around a quarter of a second shy of pole-winner Lewis Hamilton, Kimi Raikkonen admitted to being surprised by his pace relative to the Mercedes.
It was a good session for Ferrari, with Raikkonen’s team mate Sebastian Vettel to start next up tomorrow after setting a best time less than a tenth off Kimi’s.
But Raikkonen afterwards admitted to being surprised that the Ferraris were so close to Hamilton’s best.
“In a way it is a bit surprising that we were this strong compared to the Mercedes,” he said afterwards.
Raikkonen denied though that much had changed on the Ferraris overnight and thought instead that too much was read into their apparent lack of pace in Friday practice.
“We made some small improvements and obviously people always talk so it’s not about the laptimes. And worse, you don’t know what the others are doing. So, it’s pointless to say, ‘oh, we were bad yesterday’.
“We just did our stuff what we normally do. In the end, if you end up first or tenth, makes no difference if you know what you’ve been doing. So, we’ve been just… improve a bit the car and drove a bit better than yesterday. Yesterday I didn’t feel I was driving very well and then it turned out to be in qualifying it all worked out well for us.
“Obviously we’re still not happy, we’re second and third but I think it’s a place where we expected it to be a bit more difficult because the circuit layout. So it was a bit surprise but a nice one and I think things have been working well.”
Raikkonen also joked about his first front row qualifying slot since 2013, quipping that “I think it’s a while that I’ve been in the front row – eight, ten years probably!”
