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Kimi Räikkönen ended the day fifth with team-mate Romain Grosjean seventh in a tightly contested qualifying session for tomorrow’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. Hot, dry, still conditions prevailed during the final practice session, with cooling temperatures the feature of qualifying as the sun set over the Yas Marina Circuit. A straightforward Q1 session saw both drivers set a banker lap on medium tyres, before emerging for a single stint on soft rubber to sail through in third [Kimi] and seventh [Romain]. Q2 by contrast was a closely fought affair; the Finn and Frenchman progressing in ninth and eighth respectively, separated by less than three hundredths of a second after two runs apiece on softs. The top ten shootout of Q3 again saw both black and gold cars make two appearances on soft tyres, with their opening runs good enough for a pair of top six placings. As the chequered flag dropped under the Yas Marina floodlights, Kimi found himself fifth with Romain seventh. Kimi Räikkönen, E21-05 Q: P5, 1:40.542 FP3: P9, 1:42.387 “Today wasn’t too bad overall. In the early sessions both yesterday and today I struggled a bit to get the car working how I wanted, but in the evening when the temperature is cooler it’s been much more to my liking. This is good as the race will be in the evening so we’d prefer it that way around for sure. The short wheelbase car seems to suit my style a bit better too, so hopefully we can continue this way for tomorrow. Of course, you always want to be as far up the grid as you can and we clearly weren’t the fastest today, but you never know what might happen on Sunday so we’ll see what we can do.” Romain Grosjean, E21-04 Q: P7, 1:40.997 FP3: P5, 1:41.832 “That was one of the trickier qualifying sessions we’ve had recently, and seventh on the grid is not where we expected to be after the pace we’ve shown so far this weekend. The car felt quite different this evening – particularly in terms of front end – so we’ll need to investigate where it’s not quite working. It’s a long race tomorrow in tough conditions and everyone around us will be starting on the same tyres, so we need to try and find some performance from the data tonight to achieve our target of the podium.” Alan Permane, Trackside Operations Director: “We expect strong race pace tomorrow” How was qualifying for the team? That was a great qualifying performance from Kimi who was unlucky not to be in front of both Mercedes after the final sector of his qualifying lap narrowly cost him a potential third position. By contrast, Romain had a bit of a struggle today and wasn’t as comfortable with his car as he has been so far this weekend. Having both cars inside the top ten is a decent result however, as we expect to see strong race pace from the E21. What is possible tomorrow? Our target on pace alone is to race and beat Mercedes; ending the weekend with another good points haul over them in the Constructors’ Championship in the process. Of course, we’ll be ready to capitalise on any opportunities that Red Bull may present us, but they are looking very fast once more here. What are the tyre strategy considerations for the race? There don’t appear to be too many permutations here, so it could be quite a straight-forward race. Certainly, the different options that presented themselves in New Delhi don’t look to be available here so we’ll watch how the race evolves and react accordingly.

Kimi Räikkönen ended the first day of practice for the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix with the fourth fastest time of the day at the Yas Marina Circuit; racking up the joint-highest number of laps completed in the process [65 across the two sessions]. Romain Grosjean was fastest in the first session, but had a brake and then a vibration issue in the second session to end the day twelfth fastest. Technical Programme Notes: Kimi ran with the team’s original, shorter wheelbase specification whilst Romain ran with the later, longer wheelbase specification. Kimi ran trouble-free throughout both sessions enabling a variety of set-up permutations to be evaluated, whilst Romain missed track time in the second session due to an issue first with his brakes, then with vibration. Pirelli’s medium [white] tyre was used in the first session, the medium and soft [yellow] compound in the second session [both held in the afternoon]. What We Learned Today: The E21 demonstrated strong potential using both tyre compounds in both long and short configuration. Kimi Räikkönen, E21-05 Free Practice 1: P6, 1:44.929, 23 laps Free Practice 2: P4, 1:41.726, 42 laps Kimi: “The car feels okay and we had a pretty normal Friday. The shorter chassis feels okay here, but I didn’t drive it back to back with the longer one so it’s difficult to say which is better. We’re still trying to get rid of some understeer, but on this circuit it feels better so far. As always, there are some improvements we can make to the car so let’s see what happens tomorrow.” Romain Grosjean, E21-04 Free Practice 1: P1, 1:44.241, 21 laps Free Practice 2: P12, 1:42.607, 18 laps Romain: “It’s been a pretty good day even if we missed time in the later session whilst the brakes were worked on. We also had a little vibration that needed looking at, but it wasn’t the end of the world. The car feels pretty good as we saw with the fastest time in the first session, so I’m sure we’ll get on top of everything we need to for tomorrow.” Alan Permane, Trackside Operations Director: “As always in Abu Dhabi, we saw two very different sessions on Friday; the first taking place in daylight with very high track temperatures, the second in much more representative evening temperatures which is what we’ll see for qualifying and the race. We completed limited setup work in FP1 – focusing on setting ride heights rather than car balance – then used FP2 to complete our normal evaluations of the two tyre compounds. Unfortunately Romain had a brake disc failure which lost him some track time, and there was a small vibration when he returned to the track so we cut his day short in order to fully investigate this issue. Kimi meanwhile had a good day and looks competitive on both tyres. He wanted to try the short wheelbase car again as he felt its characteristics would suit this circuit. So far it all looks good and this configuration will be kept on his car for the remainder of the weekend. His long-run pace looks very encouraging on both tyres.”