A cheering crowd saluted Scuderia Ferrari’s qualifying lock-out of the front row of the grid for tomorrow’s Italian Grand Prix- Ferrari's home race.

Kimi Raikkonen secured his 18th career pole position at an average speed of 263.587Kph, which sets a new all-time lap record for Formula One cars, improving on Juan-Pablo Montoya’s previous record time from 2004. Seb Vettel came in second just 0.161 seconds slower than his team-mate. The SF71H has performed well throughout the weekend so far but the team is well aware that tomorrow is when the points are given out and will be working hard to secure the best possible result.

“The car has been good all weekend”, said Kimi “and we knew it would have been a close battle. All three sectors were obviously crucial; so far the difference between the top three had been very small, so it was a question of who would get it right and today it was me! It’s great to be on pole in our home Grand Prix in front of our tifosi. When we are driving we cannot hear them, but we could see them cheering and they gave us a lot of support. As a team we did a very good job, we couldn’t have done any better today. I’m very happy for this result but unfortunately this doesn’t guarantee anything for tomorrow. Half of the job has been done, but tomorrow is the most important day. For sure we have a good car and the best possible starting place. The race is long and many things can happen; we need to do a perfect job and hopefully tomorrow will be another good day”.

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