The Nurburgring suits Lotus better

 
Finn Kimi Raikkonen believes the Nurburgring track is better suited to his E21 race car than the one at Silverstone, yet he does not expect him to fight for the best starting position. “The car is more or less the same as last week. The better form is partly due to a different racetrack. The Nurburgring suits us better. It requires settings for more vacuum from racing cars, so it suits us better than those where less vacuum is needed. In addition, it has been quite some time since we drove on soft tires on a normal racetrack. Last time it was in Shanghai. Softer tires suit us better. ”

The Lotus racer pointed out that it is realistic to expect a ranking among the top six in the qualifiers, and they are expected to do better in the race. “The top four race cars will be very fast in the qualifiers, but in the race the story will be different. Temperatures will be even higher, which should help us. If we get into the top six with both cars tomorrow, this will be a very good starting point. We still have a little work to do on racing cars if we want to improve them.

The longer sets weren’t exactly good, but the car wasn’t set up properly. We drove with different settings and there wasn’t enough time to change. But we know which settings work better, so we don’t care. We know what we have to do tomorrow. We can expect a similar scenario as in the previous races, where we were slightly worse in the qualifications and then better in the race. ”

The 2007 champion also touched on modified tires, as well as new restrictions introduced by the FIA. “The tires are no different from the previous ones. We don’t compare them anymore now, as we only have the latest specification here. However, we compared them in Canada and found that they are more or less the same as the old ones, so we do not expect any surprises. The restrictions imposed by the FIA ​​for this race limit which direction you can go with the settings. Fortunately, we are now being confined to the frameworks in which we have operated before, so this should not hurt us too much. ”