Raikkonen calls Spa qualifying 'painful' after fuel shortage

Kimi Raikkonen called his qualifying session for the Belgian Grand Prix "painful" after a fuel shortage on his Ferrari Formula 1 car left him stuck in the pits while the track improved and drivers beat his lap time.

Raikkonen had appeared to be in the fight for pole after leading Q1 and finishing second in Q2 in dry conditions, only for rain to shake up the pecking order come the final stage of qualifying.

Ferrari rushed Raikkonen out after switching him to intermediate tyres early in the session, but filled his car only with enough fuel for one flying lap in Q3, coming in at 2m02.671s.

Raikkonen pitted and got out of his car, only for the track to get dryer, causing him to shuffle down to sixth place on the grid as midfield runners Esteban Ocon, Sergio Perez and Romain Grosjean all qualified ahead of him, with Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel filling out the front row.

Asked if he'd stopped in qualifying after running out of fuel, Raikkonen said: "Yes. What else can I say? That’s what happened and I honestly didn’t have the time to go out anymore.

"I haven’t talked with anybody yet. Honestly, for sure it’s not how it should have ended, but this is what we’ve got today.

"I knew how much fuel I had but I didn’t know we didn’t have time to refuel and go out again. I guess we should have stopped when we changed the tyres, we should have put more fuel and then would have managed to do more laps. I don’t know the reasons why, because we haven’t had the meetings yet."

Raikkonen was braced for a close fight with Mercedes at the head of the field in qualifying prior to the session, and made no secret of his frustration after missing out on a chance to get in the mix at the front.

"There was not much I could have done differently out there. It’s frustrating, it’s painful in the way we made our Sunday a hell of a lot more difficult," Raikkonen said.

"Here, unfortunately, often the first corner isn’t very clean because of the layout of the circuit, so the further back you start, the bigger risk that something goes wrong.

"Adding all the things, it’s definitely not great, but what can I do? We’ll try tomorrow again, hopefully learn from mistakes and keep going."