Kimi Raikkonen is more confident about scoring a good result than he has been all season after qualifying for the Bahrain Grand Prix on Saturday night.
Raikkonen was sixth fastest but will start from fifth on the grid once Daniel Ricciardo’s 10-place grid penalty has been factored in. Despite struggling to show his true pace so far this weekend, he said the car feels better now than it has at any point over the last two races.
“Yesterday the long runs felt pretty difficult but suddenly on the soft tyres it felt pretty nice,” he said. “I think we made the right changes to the car for today so I expect that it should be pretty okay, but I don’t know whether it is fast enough to be fighting with those [other cars for third] and obviously we have to get through the first corner and the first lap.
“We are only going to see [if we can do] that tomorrow, but I am more confident overall with how things have gone than at any race before this year. Hopefully we will get through the first corners, get a good start and go from there.”