MARINA BAY, Singapore -- Kimi Raikkonen says his Ferrari's lack of "overall grip" was to blame for the 0.956s gap to Nico Rosberg's Mercedes on pole position during qualifying for the Singapore Grand Prix.
At the same race last year, Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel held a 1.4s gap over the fastest Mercedes, but this year that advantage had swung back in favour of the world champions. Raikkonen said it is obvious what Ferrari is lacking compared to Mercedes.
"I don't really care what the gap is right now -- we are fifth and we've seen that before in some races and in some races not," he said. "They've been strong here and unfortunately this is what we've got today.
"The car was behaving pretty decently, apart from obviously lacking a bit of grip overall. But there weren't issues that we could have fixed to suddenly go faster, apart from adding overall grip.
"The first lap in Q3 was a good lap and I knew I had to try a bit too much to go faster in the second lap and it didn't pay off. This is where you ended up."
The Red Bulls completed Q2 on the super-soft tyres, meaning they will start the race on those tyres while the rest of the top ten will start on the ultra-softs. Raikkonen, who starts the race from fifth behind both Mercedes and both Red Bulls, said Ferrari considered the strategy but believes it will be a better approach to start on the ultra-softs.
"Obviously all of us had the chance to do that but we all do what we think is the best for our cars and our teams. How it will pan out tomorrow, we'll see, I have no idea and I'm not really interested on how they will run it.
"We have to do our maximum and hopefully it will pay off in a good way. It's going to be a long race and a lot usually happens, so we have to right with the timings and hopefully we gain some places."