Raikkonen wanted more

"Obviously I'm happy with my first front row start but I believe there was a chance to further improve my time at the end," he said. "However, there was sand on the track and I also got the car a little out of shape at the double left-hander because I was pushing very hard. Our package seems to work very well here so I'm looking forward to the race."

Since coming close to winning the French GP McLaren has slipped away from the pace at the front end, so team boss Ron Dennis was delighted to see one of his cars back at the sharop end of the grid.

"A great performance from both drivers and clearly a step forward by the whole team," he said. "Hopefully we will have a dry race tomorrow which I think will be better for everybody."

David Coulthard was over half a second behind his team-mate in sixth place, but the Scot is confident that he'll be more competitive in the race.

"With the race in mind we had chosen a different tyre compound than Kimi so I was not too surprised with the outcome," he said. "I seem to lose most of my time in the middle sector, which we will investigate. We now look forward to the race when I believe that we will be in much better shape."