Abu Dhabi GP qualifying: Raikkonen secures the third place and Vettel stranded in Q1

Yas Marina – A breathtaking final lap resulted in a third place come the end of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix qualifying for Kimi Raikkonen today. The Finn set his best lap of the weekend in a time of 1.41.051, on his very last lap prior to the chequered flag. Sebastian Vettel had a tough afternoon, who having completed his first run on the Soft tyre, then took to the track with a set of Supersofts. Unfortunately, he was not able to make the cut into Q2 and qualified sixteenth. Starting from pole tomorrow will be Nico Rosberg, who took his Mercedes round in a time of 1.40.237, ahead of team-mate Lewis Hamilton (1.40.614).

Maurizio Arrivabene: “A huge mistake on our side made it impossible for Seb to progress beyond Q1. Kimi did an outstanding job, ending the session with third best time. Tomorrow in the race we must simply give our best, in order to finish this season in style”.

Kimi Raikkonen: “It has been a nice Saturday, my car has been feeling pretty good the whole day. This morning I only struggled on some laps, but overall the behavior was the way I wanted and when it’s like that it’s a lot easier to put the lap together. The Mercedes have been very quick today and yesterday, in the lap times they are a bit faster than us, but the race is tomorrow, so let’s see. I did my maximum today. Tomorrow is another day, we can only do our best and see where we’ll end up. We’ll try to make a good start and then see how it pans out, going from there and making the right decisions.”

Sebastian Vettel: “Nothing wrong with the car, we thought that the lap I had on the Soft (harder) tyres was quick enough, but in the end it was not. There was also a car in front which shouldn’t have been there. So we misjudged the situation, a small mistake with big consequence, but the race is tomorrow and lots can happen. It is good that Kimi is in the front, we have a quick car and it is possible to overtake here, even if only tomorrow we’ll be able to tell how much it is. You can spend a lot of time speaking about what we did wrong, but in the end we know, so now we need to move forward.”

Scuderia Ferrari