Raikkonen wary of “unknowns” for Spanish GP

Kimi Raikkonen feels he’ll be faced with a series of unknowns heading into the Spanish Grand Prix after missing out on vital long runs during Friday practice due to a Ferrari engine blow.

The Finnish driver has qualified on the second row of the grid in fourth place behind Ferrari teammate Sebastian Vettel and both Mercedes drivers. Raikkonen, who has secured three podiums in the opening four races to produce his best start to an F1 campaign since 2013, fears he has plenty of unknowns over a race distance in regards to tyre behaviour and set-up with his Ferrari after missing a chunk of FP2 with an engine issue.

Ferrari says as a precaution it has replaced the MGU-H, turbocharger and internal combustion engine on Raikkonen’s power unit after his Friday blow which he fears will impact his race plans on Sunday which has been increased by Pirelli's tyre tread tweaks for the Circuit de Catalunya.

“I didn’t have the long runs yesterday, so it’s a bit unknown,” Raikkonen said. “In what we managed to do it felt pretty okay, so it could have been a little bit better in qualifying.

“Since I didn’t do the long runs yesterday it’s even more unknowns, at least for me. We’ll see what happens tomorrow. Is it going to be very straightforward or not, I think it’s a bit tricky to say.

"The tyres have been a little bit changed, for whatever reason, so obviously they’re not the same as they were in the other races. Of course from winter it’s impossible to compare, but in this race we have slightly different rear tyres. Does it make it different? I don’t know.

“Obviously in winter testing we did longer runs but it was very cold and these conditions are very different and with the small change on the tyres, who knows?”

Raikkonen saw his Spanish Grand Prix ended prematurely last year from a similar starting position when he was involved in a clash with Max Verstappen on the opening lap.