Kimi Raikkonen admits that he has still not got to the bottom of the balance issues that have plagued him since the beginning of the weekend at Hockenheim, as he lines up just sixth on the grid for the German Grand Prix, seven tenths of a second away from pole-sitter
Lewis Hamilton.
The Finn had rarely looked on the pace of
Ferrari team-mate
Felipe Massa throughout free practice, and was ragged to say the least in all three parts of qualifying.
Though a calmer approach seemed to have hoisted him up onto the front row of the grid in the dying moments, subsequent improvements from Hamilton,
Heikki Kovalainen,
Jarno Trulli and
Fernando Alonso demoted Raikkonen to row three – meaning he will be at the mercy of front row sitters and fellow championship leaders Massa and Hamilton come race day.
“All weekend-long, we have been struggling a bit to find a good set-up for the car,” the defending
F1 World Champion recounted. “At the end of yesterday it seemed we were on the right road, and this morning we tried to improve still further down this path, but it was not the right one.
“In qualifying, we went reasonably well with low fuel, but in the final session the car was not as good. Clearly sixth place is not satisfying, and tomorrow we won't be in for an easy time, but it's definitely not the end of the world.
“It will be a long race, and that's when the points are allocated. For our part, we will do all we can to get a good finish position.”
The 28-year-old's remarks were backed up by the
Scuderia's team principal Stefano Domenicali and technical director Luca Baldisserri, both of whom acknowledged Raikkonen would have much work to do if his race was not to merely turn into a damage limitation exercise.
“Kimi never managed to find the right balance on his car,” admitted Domenicali. “It's true that to analyse this afternoon's result objectively one would need to know how much fuel the others have on-board, but clearly, starting from the third row won't make life easy for Kimi.”
