A cheering crowd saluted Scuderia Ferrari’s qualifying lock-out of the front row of the grid for tomorrow’s Italian Grand Prix. Kimi Raikkonen secured his 18th career pole position. Sebastian Vettel came in second just 0.161 seconds slower than his teammate.
“The car has been good all weekend”, said Raikkonen, “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.”
The fastest lap in F1 history ?@ScuderiaFerrari #ItalianGP ?? pic.twitter.com/p0ALZWMkBb
— Formula 1 (@F1) September 1, 2018
A smile plays on Kimi’s lips…#ItalianGP ?? #F1 pic.twitter.com/RJDBZRBWLA
— Formula 1 (@F1) September 1, 2018
Raikkonen: It’s great to be on pole in our home Grand Prix in front of our tifosi
Vettel commented: “I’m a bit disappointed as I couldn’t get pole today and made some mistakes, so that my lap was not that tidy, but locking out the front row with both cars is a great result for the whole team. For tomorrow I think we will have the right speed to race and hopefully we can have a good start, which is always important, especially here. The race is long, so that anything can happen, but we’ll work hard and do our best. The car is strong, so we should be fine. I am happy for the result, as much for our tifosi and hope to get the same result tomorrow”.
VETTEL: “Unbelievable to see the amount of support around the track. Kimi was a little bit too fast in the end. My lap wasn’t very good. Great to have both cars on the front row” #ItalianGP ?? #F1 pic.twitter.com/GzxI6RWxhJ
— Formula 1 (@F1) September 1, 2018
