Kimi Raikkonen has admitted that qualifying is his Achilles' heel in
Formula 1 but he has insisted that he is convinced
Ferrari can win all the remaining races on the 2008 calendar.
The defending world champion has been outpaced four-one by Ferrari team-mate
Felipe Massa thus far in qualifying this year, and his pole position in Barcelona just over a fortnight ago was his first top spot since the Belgian Grand Prix last September. Though his racecraft has nevertheless enabled him to rack up 35 points from the opening five races of the current campaign six more than any of his rivals he acknowledged that Saturday afternoon is an area he needs to work on.
It wasn't the best qualifying for me, Raikkonen acknowledged of lining up fourth on the starting grid in Istanbul, but it has been my weakest point. We had a bit more fuel than the others which is one reason, but also the lap wasn't as good as I wanted.
I think it all started on Friday when we had a problem. We had a difficult weekend and I didn't have a very good start the inside line is never going to be as good as the clean side. I got to the side of him [Heikki Kovalainen] on braking, then I got a little bit squeezed on the inside and I tried to slow down and get behind him because otherwise we would have hit hard but he just turned in a little bit. I hit the rear wheel of Heikki and the bottom of the end-plate came off.
The unfortunate thing for both of us is that I broke the front wing and he had a puncture. It didn't help either of us. We chose to use the front wing for the whole race because it takes too long to change it, and it wasn't too bad, but it never helps as the end of the wing was damaged. It is difficult to say how much better or different it would have been with the proper wing, but for sure it doesn't help you.
