Kimi Raikkonen feels confident for 2012 Spanish Grand Prix – Formula 1 news
Lotus driver Kimi Raikkonen has said that he is feeling confident for 2012 Spanish Grand Prix which is going to be held at Circuit de Catalunya in Barcelona on May 13.
Raikkonen set the fifth best time of 1 minute and 23.918 seconds in the free Friday practice session of Spanish GP and covered 32 laps. Afterwards, he expressed that he is delighted with the performance of E20 as they have been able to make improvements
in the car during the three-day in-season test held at Mugello circuit.
“There were no problems with the car and everything felt good today,” said he. “We tried a different front wing, but in the car you can't tell if it makes much difference; that is why the team's engineers are looking at the data. I felt comfortable and I
think the work done at Mugello and in the Windshear test programme have made improvements.”
In addition, he said that they are looking forward to the qualifying so as to ascertain the pace of other contenders. He also said that they will hopefully perform well on Saturday as they have managed to keep up the consistency in all the races in the season
until now.
“We'll have to see tomorrow how much pace everyone has when it comes to qualifying as that's when it matters. We've been fast everywhere else so far and there's nothing to suggest we won't be fast here again,” he said.
The Finnish driver is at 7th place in the drivers’ standings with 34 points. Additionally, he is just one point behind Nico Rosberg of Mercedes and 11 points ahead of his teammate, Romain Grosjean.
He has delivered quite convincing performances in the season so far. In the season opener, he secured an impressive 7th place finish after staring from 17thgrid position. Subsequently, in the second race, he came 5th after he qualified for 10th place in
the grid.
Unfortunately, he could not pocket any points in the third race and ended at 14th place even after beginning from 4th grid position. Nevertheless, in the fourth race he secured an incredible second podium finish and gave a hard time to the race winner, Sebastian
Vettel of Red Bull.
Although, he said that to secure a competitive grid position will be helpful in next race, nonetheless, he said that he can still manage to move to the front after setting off from behind as he did in the last race.
Tags: