Raikkonen Surprised by Qualifying Pace

Finn Kimi Raikkonen admitted he was surprised by his performance in today's final qualifying for the British Grand Prix.

The McLaren driver had struggled for pace in yesterday's first qualifying session but recovered well today, posting the first fastest time ahead of Championship rivals Ralf and Michael Schumacher, who leads Raikkonen by eight points.

"It was the best lap I've done this weekend and the right time to do it," said Raikkonen. "I had already changed out of my overalls before the end of qualifying as I wasn't expecting to do the top three interviews. I'm very pleased with my lap as we were really struggling with the balance yesterday.

"We improved the car throughout practice this morning and even made a few more adjustments after warm up and the car felt really good. I'm confident of a good result tomorrow."

Teammate David Coulthard lapped more than a second slower than Raikkonen, taking a disappointing 12th place.

"I was really struggling with the balance of the car," said Coulthard. "As a result I ran wide at Stowe, locked up the front under braking at Club and lost a lot of time. I was generally not hitting the apex of the corners, and we tried to make a few more changes after warm up but they didn't work out.

"It will be a challenging race for me in front of my home crowd. However I have started in similar positions before and still managed to finish in the points or even on the podium"