Raikkonen: I Could Have been Second

Finn Kimi Raikkonen said he was disappointed after qualifying for the French Grand Prix, despite recording his best ever performance in Formula One.

The McLaren driver, in his second season in Grand Prix racing, managed to set the fourth quickest time behind Colombian Juan Pablo Montoya and Ferrari drivers Michael Schumacher and Rubens Barrichello.

Raikkonen also outqualified his teammate David Coulthard for the seventh time this year. The young Finn, however, was not completely happy with his performance, and claimed he could have even set the second quickest time if not for a driving error on his final attempt.

"Fourth is my best qualifying performance ever, but I'm still a bit disappointed as I could have been third or perhaps even second," said Raikkonen. "However I made a mistake in the first sector on my last run and as a result I lost some time which was a shame.

"The tyres were working well and I can't see why that should not be the case for the race tomorrow if the conditions stay the same."

Coulthard posted the sixth quickest time behind Ralf Schumacher, and the Scot was happy to see the smaller gap to the pole position time. Coulthard was slightly over half a seconds away from Montoya's time, in a field where the top ten were covered by only 1.2 seconds.

"We can be quite encouraged by the fact that the gap to the competition is less than in previous races, but we are where we expected to be," said the Scot. "I had a bit of oversteer which improved during the session, but it made it hard to really attack the corners.

"We hope the package will work well in race trim and I think the challenge will be to find a consistent balance as the race will be hard particularly on the rear tyres."