Saturday in Germany: “Should’ve been P3 today”

| Source: lotusf1team.com |

After qualifying in fourth position for tomorrow’s German Grand Prix, our Finn is staying circumspect about what could be possible at the Nürburgring…

Q: How was qualifying for you?

KR: My car was okay today, but in my Q3 lap on the new tyres I struggled to get the fronts up to temperature which meant I lost quite a bit of time in the first sector; probably because there was traffic on my out lap meaning I couldn’t push as much as I wanted. For sure it didn’t help and we probably should have been P3 today, but P4 is still a pretty good place to be for the race.

Q: How much time do you think you lost in the first sector?

KR: We reckon about three tenths so it would have made a difference, but there’s no point saying ‘what if’. Anything can happen in the race tomorrow…

Q: Fourth on the grid given the E21’s usual race pace shcould be a strong place to start?

KR: Certainly, it’s better than we’ve been for the last few races, but it doesn’t really mean anything. We could have a good race tomorrow, but there’s every chance that things could go wrong for us too. That’s motor racing. Let’s see what happens.

Other Quotes:

Raikkonen: heat helped our performance

Kimi Raikkonen believes the relatively high track temperatures in Germany helped Lotus to produce its best Formula 1 qualifying performance since May’s Spanish Grand Prix.

Raikkonen qualified fourth at the Nurburgring, 0.494 seconds off Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton’s pole position time, and suspects that he could have ended up third but for losing time in the first sector thanks to a lack of tyre temperature.

“It has been good,” said Raikkonen when asked about Lotus’s form. “It helped that it was a bit more hot.

“I think we had the chance to be in third place but I had some traffic on the out-lap and didn’t really get their [the tyres] performance to work as we wanted to.”

Even though the 2007 world champion is happy with the performance of the car, he stressed that there are no guarantees this strong form will continue on Sunday.

But he did concede that Lotus is traditionally stronger in the race than in qualifying.

“It is better than the last couple of races, but it’s not so easy that now we should be more close to the others [in the race] than before because we are further up,” said Raikkonen.

“That [performing stronger in the race] is what normally happens, but it can be a different story.”