Qualifying - Belgian GP report: Ferrari

Kimi Raikkonen endured a complicated qualifying session, having to park the car a few minutes before the end of Q2, when his car lost oil pressure. The Finn was ninth fastest at the time, but dropped to fourteenth because of the failure. In the other Ferrari, Sebastian Vettel was ninth fastest, making a mistake at the final corner, but will probably start from eighth because of a penalty for Romain Grosjean. The first row was locked out by Mercedes with Lewis Hamilton (1:47.197) on pole and Nico Rosberg (1:47.895) second.

Kimi Raikkonen

“I don’t know exactly what happened, I lost some drive and had to stop. It’s too early to say what the problem was, we have to wait to know more about the issue. Our car has been handling pretty nice all weekend, unfortunately the issue has come at the bad time, my position could have been a bit better. Yesterday we had been trying few different things and I think we had made the right choices for today. Obviously we know we have to improve in all areas. My starting position will make my race very tricky but I hope that the race condition will turn in our favour. It’s important to go through the first corner: even if it won’t be easy to get past Mercedes-engined cars, we’ll keep fighting and doing our best.”

Sebastian Vettel

“It’s very simple: in Q2 we were third and it was very tight if you look at the lap times. In Q3 I was having the same pace, unfortunately I was not able to improve like others, also lost some time at the last corner, and that’s why we’re not in front. But I don’t think there’s a reason to panic. For sure we’re not happy, I lost two or maybe three tenths, but tomorrow we should have a decent pace and pretty good straightline speed to turn things around. We have a good car and a strong package for the race. There’s a lot to be done tomorrow, it’s a long race, the starting and first turn will be interesting and there could be some rain at some point. There’s nothing wrong so we’re expecting a progress.”