Second row for the Scuderia Ferrari on qualifying for the Bahrain GP

2 April –At the atmospheric floodlit Al Sakhir circuit, the qualifying session to determine the starting grid for the Bahrain Grand Prix has just ended. In a close battle, which involved using their last sets of Supersoft tyres, Vettel and Raikkonen finished third and fourth respectively. Sebastian’s best lap was a 1.30.012, which was 232 thousandths of a second faster than Kimi’s. Lewis Hamilton will start from pole for Mercedes, with a best time of 1.29.493.

Kimi Raikkonen

"The session went straightforward, everything worked pretty ok, but obviously it would have been better to gain some positions. With the last set of Supersoft tires I had some difficulties in the first few corners, so I was not able to improve my laptime, but apart from that it seemed to be ok. Still, this is not the result we aim to, we want to be in the front. We definitely have some more work to do because we are more or less close to where we want to be. Tomorrow we'll try to improve from where we finished today, we'll do our best and see what the day brings. Let's try to make it a good race."

Sebastian Vettel

"I am happy to take the fight. Let's see where we are during the race. Today there's nothing really to complain about. It's a big surprise that both Lewis and Nico in the end were able to improve so much. For me the track was similar to the run before and that's why the time was practically the same. Tomorrow we hope to have a good start, but not doing the same as in Australia thereafter... We know we are not yet where we want to be but I think we are pushing very hard though.

Obviously the season has started already so it's up to us to make sure we keep making technical progress, but as I said many times the car is a big improvement to last year and this will provide more opportunities to improve also in the future; but we really have to keep up the pressure. You can talk about what can happen in ten races but we have to focus first of all on tomorrow, prepare the race as good as we can because there's a chance to do well and to win.

That's my belief. If I am right or not we'll see, but that's the joy, I think, and what I love about racing. To put it in simple terms, I would love to win tomorrow. Naturally if we had more speed we'd also have a better chance to win. But I think we are on the right track, we are a team and we try to improve together. Today was a good day for us, all the car balance was good and we got everything we wanted by ourselves, which is the most important thing. "

Scuderia Ferrari