Kimi will start third ahead of Sebastian

At the end of a closely contested qualifying session today at the Spa-Francorchamps circuit, Kimi Raikkonen claimed third place in 1.46.910, just 166 thousandths of a second off the pole time. The Finn finished ahead of Sebastian Vettel, fourth in 1.47.108. Starting from pole will be Nico Rosberg who took his Mercedes round in 1.46.744.

Kimi Raikkonen: So far it has been a decent weekend, the car was behaving well today and we had the speed. My first run in Q3 was very good, but I went sideways and off track. The second attempt was even better, but in the last chicane I had some slight understeer and lost a few tenths compared to my Q2 sector. Today I felt we had the chance to get pole position, so I’m a bit disappointed, my laptime was not good enough. On a positive side, we are very close compared to the last couple of races. We decided to start the race with Soft tires, if you can make them work it will make a massive difference, we’ll see how the race will pan out but I think our plan will be fine. We’ll do our best, of course the hot conditions won’t be easy for the tires, but it’s the same for everybody. Hopefully we’ll be up there fighting also tomorrow.”

Sebastian Vettel: ”I’m sure we made a step forward from yesterday! If you look at the gaps between the cars, they are very close, so tomorrow it should be a good race. Obviously you always want a little bit more, the exit of the last corner in particular wasn’t very strong, so I can’t be happy with that. The rest of the lap was ok, we had a much better balance than on Friday, but it’s important to be fast in all three sectors to be up there. We decided to start the race on the Soft tires, we believe that this is the best strategy, we’ll see tomorrow. Anything can happen, there could even be some rain, in Spa you never know…”