BAKU, Azerbaijan -- Kimi Raikkonen is happy to be starting on the second row of the grid for the Grand Prix of Europe, despite knowing Ferrari could have done better.
Raikkonen qualified fifth in Baku but will start fourth once Sergio Perez's grid penalty has been applied. Despite being outqualified by a Force India and Red Bull on a track where Ferrari was expected to be Mercedes' closest rivals, Raikkonen said he was still happy with the result.
"I'm sure it could have been better but, after yesterday and this morning, if you said that we would get fifth place we would have been OK with it," he said. "The things we managed to do with the set-up of the car were quite nice, but obviously what happened during qualifying made me have one used set at the start of Q3, the one from this morning when we had an issue, and then the new set for the end went away because of the red flag.
"So, with a lot of people trying to get a last lap after the red flag was over, there was traffic and my tyres were used, anyway. I'm sure it could have been better but this is how it ended. After a pretty tricky weekend, you take it, but for sure there was more to come. This is what it is and at least for tomorrow the car should be a bit better too."
Lewis Hamilton and Sergio Perez are both out of position behind Raikkonen, but the Ferrari driver does not think he will end up driving a defensive race.
"Lewis obviously has been fast all weekend, Pérez was fast but had some issues, but I think our car should be pretty OK, so I don't think we need to defend a lot, we try to go forward. How it's going to pan out, who knows, but we expect to have a lot of things happening in the race.
"It's easy to run long, but you'll get lots of yellow flags, lots of Safety Cars or red flags, who knows? In many ways it will be a long and tricky race for a lot of people, so we need to make the right choices when they'll come and see what happens."