F1
Nate Saunders, General Editor, F1 7y

Kimi Raikkonen on fourth: 'It could have been a lot worse'

Formula 1

Kimi Raikkonen was happy to settle for the final spot on the second row of the grid after feeling "far from comfortable" throughout qualifying in Singapore.

While Sebastian Vettel turned in one of the qualifying performances of the season to beat the quick Red Bulls, Raikkonen was nearly 0.6s behind his teammate. Despite believing he could have joined his teammate on the front row, after his struggles in FP3 the Finn was satisfied with where he finished.

"I'll take the fourth place, because if you purely look at where we were before qualifying, it could have been a lot worse," Raikkonen said. "We gave ourselves a decent chance for tomorrow and it's going to be a long, tricky race. We'll keep pushing and try to make the most out of it and see what happens."

Red Bull had appeared to be favourites going into qualifying after showing strong qualifying pace, but Raikkonen thinks the final result shows Fridays can be misleading in Formula One. 

"It all seemed to change for qualifying, but we have seen that in other weekends. Some teams can be quick very early in the weekend and then everyone closes up and bunches up a bit.

"Different fuel loads, or runs, it's so easy to make somebody look good. It's a bit pointless to look at the Friday times and say 'this team will be ahead of others'.

"More often than not, everyone bunches up. The top three teams are usually closer to each other. Since yesterday, we -- at least myself -- was nowhere near to the Red Bull; today, without some mistakes, we could have [both] been ahead of them."

Raikkonen made a step forward from his own struggles on Friday but thinks the small changes made to his set-up may have compromised his chances in the long run. 

"I think overall we wanted more grip but that's the normal story. We just tried to make the car more consistent, doing what you expect and knowing what it's going to do. But it was more a bit of fighting with different issues, improving one and creating another one. It's small things but, especially in this kind of circuit, they're going to make it very difficult."

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