2013 CHINESE GP: LOTUS FEELS VICTORY SO CLOSE - FORMULA 1

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Saturday, April 13, 2013

2013 CHINESE GP: LOTUS FEELS VICTORY SO CLOSE

Kimi Räikkönen will have his first front row start since the 2009 Monaco Grand Prix after qualifying second for tomorrow’s Chinese Grand Prix at the Shanghai International Circuit. Kimi set a 1min 34.761secs lap using Pirelli’s soft compound tyre and will start alongside Lewis Hamilton for the 56 lap race. Romain Grosjean was also comfortably inside the top ten, with a Q3 time of 1min 35.364secs placing him sixth on the grid.

Kimi Räikkönen: "This is my best qualifying for the team which is good, but of course you always want to be on pole." tweet it “This is my best qualifying for the team which is good, but of course you always want to be on pole. It’s been quite a tricky weekend so far and we’ve had a few small issues with setup, but it’s always difficult to get things exactly how you want them and the car seems to be working well now. The tyres will of course be the question mark tomorrow; some people are starting on the primes but we chose the strategy we think will work best. Hopefully we can keep managing the degradation well like we have so far this season and have a good race tomorrow.”

Romain Grosjean: "The engineers have been working hard and did a fantastic job." tweet it “Friday was difficult and we missed some time on Saturday morning so it’s been a challenging weekend, but I’m finally back in business. We’ve been chasing some small problems here and there, but the engineers have been working hard and did a fantastic job to get the car to where it is now. My first lap on options in Q1 was actually my first of the weekend with those tyres so we had to guess a little on the set up, but I think we did pretty well. Of course you always want to do better, but overall I’m pleased. The car was much better this afternoon so let’s see what we can do in the race.”