Source: lotusf1team.com
P5 in qualifying for tomorrow’s Korean Grand Prix gives Kimi his best grid slot since Belgium; a race which also brought the team’s last podium finish. Can the Iceman match that performance on Sunday? Let’s hear from the man himself…
Q: Kimi; give us your view on today’s qualifying session?
KR: It was okay; I think we did more or less the best we could have done. We tried some different things on the car over the weekend and there’s still a bit of work to do on the setup but we’ve qualified in a reasonably good position which makes the race a bit easier. Of course you always want to go faster, but I think there’s still more to come from the car so let’s wait and see…
Q: Have you noticed an improvement from the Coandă exhaust as the weekend has gone on?
KR: The new exhaust system feels good; you do lose a little horsepower from it which means the car is a bit slower down the straight but on the other hand it’s better on the aero side. You can’t get something for nothing and I think we’ve made a good start with it, so hopefully with a bit more time in Friday practice it can give us even more improvement.
Q: You didn’t seem entirely comfortable with the car on Friday but things really seemed to come together today; especially in Q1…
KR: Yesterday was a bit difficult but we did some work overnight and things have improved a lot today. It was good to go through the first part with just one run as it gives you more tyres left over. At one point in Q2 there was a bit too much understeer but we managed to get rid of it. I think it was because my first set of tyres wasn’t so great but we switched to a different set, added a bit more front wing and the car felt much better.
Q: This is your best grid position since Belgium where you finished on the podium; does that give you cause for optimism heading into tomorrow’s race?
KR: This is probably the best we’ve been in qualifying for a while and the gap to the cars at the front is not too much, so for sure it gives us a better chance of a good result in the race. We don’t know what fuel levels the others were running yesterday, but our long run pace looked pretty strong so hopefully with the speed we’ve shown in qualifying we can score lots of points. There’s no use trying to predict the result because anything can happen, but I think we’ve got a good chance for a decent result so let’s see what we can do…
FUCK ISRAEL 
Well done Iceman, now go for it -you know you can-..!!!!
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http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/103417
Kimi Raikkonen refuses to get carried away with hopes of a Lotus resurgence, despite the team’s improved Korea form giving him a shot at staying in title contention.
The Lotus driver qualified fifth at Yeongam, his best qualifying result since the Belgian Grand Prix.
That return to coincided coincided with his outfit successfully introducing a raft of updates, including the Coanda-effect exhausts.
With Raikkonen currently lying 37 points behind Fernando Alonso in the title chase, he cannot afford to lose much more ground if he is to remain a realistic championship contender.
But although he appears to have the machinery to fight the cars ahead of him, Raikkonen says his only mindset is simply to try his best – rather than build up his expectations.
“We’ll try our best and see what happens,” he said. “The race might end at the first corner, you never know.
“Hopefully we can get a result but you cannot really say ‘we will finish in this position’. We have a chance to do well but things can easily go wrong and then you get nothing.
“We’ll try to do our best and see what we end up with.”
Raikkonen thinks the benefits of the new exhaust layout will increase in future races as Lotus learns how to extract its potential and balance the downforce benefits with the loss of power.
“We are slower in a straight line because you lose a bit of power with these things,” he said. “I think with more races and more practice we’ll probably learn something more and can improve it.
“It’s maybe not as good as we expected in a perfect situation, but it’s still a good start.”
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