Kimi's abrupt end to Qualifying at Bahrain

By Karl King
March 11 2006

Kimi Raikkonen was the target of terrible luck with reliability at the opening qualifying round at Bahrain today. The Finn's bid for pole was ruined within the first ten minutes thanks to a suspension failure on his MP4-21.

"There is not much I can say about today," Kimi told the official site.

"It is very disappointing to not even complete one timed lap as I believe that the team had a good strategy for the new qualifying system, and I could have been amongst the quickest.

"Although it is far from ideal to start from the back of the grid, there are overtaking opportunities at this track, and I have done this before and still achieved good results."

"We will just have to see what happens in the race tomorrow," the 'Iceman' concluded.

McLaren boss Ron Dennis described the team's attempt at the new qualifying format as "painful."

"Our overall competitiveness is still difficult to judge as the fuel load used for the final qualifying still plays a significant role in respect of race strategy.

"Juan Pablo's set up is still not perfect and Kimi's car suffered a rear suspension lower wishbone failure which was caused by a manufacturing fault, which, after many thousands of kilometres of testing, is difficult to come to terms with."

Mercedes motorsport boss Norbert Haug said "It is a shame that Kimi suffered from a rear suspension failure.

"In more than 8000km of testing we have not experienced such a breakdown.

"We have what we think is a good strategy and a solid basis for a good performance in the race and our speed so far looks OK."