quoteMalaysian GP – Raikkonen: “A question of feeling”
Kimi Raikkonen: “The rain made this qualifying very difficult. I knew that in the wet it would not be easy, but I didn’t expect to have so many problems. I had poor traction and on top of that, with the Extreme Wet, for some reason I was losing grip after the first lap. Now we have to find out why, as it will be useful for the coming races. Cleary, I’m not happy with sixth place, but given the circumstances, I cannot say I’m surprised and now I only want to think about doing well tomorrow. It will be a tough race with particularly high temperatures, but I am reasonably confident, because we have gone better here than in Melbourne and if we don’t have any problems, we can think in terms of getting a better result. Overall, my feel for the car is improving and even if there is still a way to go, we are working in the right direction.”
quoteRaikkonen surprised by struggles in the wet Kimi Raikkonen's form from practice disappeared in qualifying
Kimi Raikkonen said he was surprised by his drop off in pace during a wet qualifying session at the Malaysian Grand Prix.
Raikkonen had looked like the best of the rest in the dry practice sessions prior to qualifying, but as soon as the rain came in qualifying he struggled to show the same kind of pace. He will start from sixth on Sunday's grid, but felt the car was capable of more in the dry.
"It's always going to be more difficult in the wet but you expect it to obviously be a bit more normal," he said. "It was my first time on full wets in this car for me and it seemed to be very tricky for some reason. We have to see what the reason is but the feeling was very poor and very difficult from the handling point of view. So I'm pretty surprised we ended up where we are. It feels disappointing but it could have been much more worse and we are doing a much better job overall than in the first race. It's at least going in the right direction even if we are quite a long way away."
However, Raikkonen is confident of a stronger showing in the race at Malaysia than he had in Australia.
"We try to do the best that we can and hopefully have no issues. We've done a much better job this week than we did in the first weekend, and like I said the car is feeling a bit better [in the dry]. It's not where I want it to be but maybe the circuit layout is helping a bit. Let's see how the weather is and try to do the best that we can. We had quite a few issues in the first weekend and we know if we can do a similar job overall, but without problems we should be in a much stronger position in the race. We first have to finish and hopefully be up there and fight for position."
quotePat Fry: “We can regard this as a positive result. Qualifying was extremely close because of the weather and also because of the condition of our cars. The start positions are not really those we were aiming for, but all the same, they show the team is working in the right direction to close the gap to Mercedes. Q1 was relatively straightforward to read and then the mechanics did an amazing job on Fernando’s car, changing the steering arm in just a few minutes, after the collision with Kvyat’s Toro Rosso. He was back on track in record time and from then on, Fernando still had to fight to control the car and I think, in that situation, not many drivers could have done the lap he did in Q3. He really deserves our congratulations. Kimi’s performance was no less impressive: we know he’s not yet completely happy with the feeling of his F14 T and in the wet, he had some car balance problems, but I think he can have an attacking race from where he is on the grid. Once again here, Mercedes is setting the pace, but we will try and make the most of any opportunity, although the priority is to finish the race, because more than ever this year, you can’t take reliability for granted.”
TS and Heikki Kulta writes again, how determined Kimi is to get the car to his liking and show his true performance with it, even the paddock talks about it. So this "new " Kimi has made it clear , he will not make compromises.
I think Kimi did a decent job, unfortunately he was better on inters then on full wets. His timing in the Q3 also wasn't good. But that is exactly what happens when it is wet, it turn into a semi lottery. I dont know why this race was moved to this time slot, it is just irritating we dont need such lotteries at the start of the season.
Before qualifying I knew that Kimi was on a low downforce setup as his times in S1 and S3 was better, but a low downforce setup isn't good for the wet. We can clearly see this with Red Bull, they are a bit behind in the dry but as soon as it rains the car improves a lot as they always have good downforce. I hope once again it would be dry for the race tomorrow.
quoteLotus F1 Team @Lotus_F1Team 14 Std. To any media @sepangcircuit - later interview times today: @RGrosjean at 19:00 and @Pastormaldo at 19:15. Magnums on offer.
TS writes Kimi will have some new parts to Bahrain already. Kimi was also on good mood after quali, he didnt expect to be sixth as he lost all traction from front of the car with full wets.I think the timing , when he went to the pit lane port, was bad as he had to wait for minute and half. During that time his tyres cooled down a lot.
his times looked fast at times but he could not overtake... why? any idea? i cant believe it was him, suddenly loosing his speed...so what was the reason???
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Sat Mar 29, 2014 4:00 pm
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The seperated twins 
Kimi 
