Raikkonen admits he "threw away" chance of pole

Raikkonen qualified 0.168s slower than pole-winner Vettel, and rued a big moment at the Turn 6 chicane.

"Actually not too good," said Raikkonen of his fastest lap. "I mean, the start was good, and the end was not too bad, but in the chicane I braked on the outside kerb and got loose and really threw it away there.

"It was decent enough still for second place, but it's a bit disappointing, I felt I had it, but I couldn't really finish it.

"You try to always find a better way of driving, so it's very normal to discuss something like that, and I was pretty happy with the last lap apart from going into the chicane, where I got sideways and lost some time. But it is a great [result] for the team,

"Yesterday wasn't the easiest day and definitely today we can be pretty happy with things. In qualifying, I must say we are happy how we're handling [it] now.

"So far so far good, tomorrow will be a long race and hard battle. We have to keep this going."

Delight for Vettel

Vettel scored his 48^th career pole, despite failing to match his opening run by 0.002s on his final Q3 lap.

"It was seamless in terms of we didn't have any problems," said Vettel of his qualifying. "I felt quite good with the car straight away from Q1 onwards, we did the laps we had to, I was confident.

"We had debate about what to do with the car, I was happy with it but knew there was more from the car, so went flat out – but arrived in last sector and maybe asked too much from the tyres early on.

"Happy with first lap, second could be better."