Kimi Raikkonen has never raced at Watkins Glen before, and the format of the weekend in this series is such that each driver spends only 20 minutes on the track during training, following which qualification immediately follows.
In the end, Kimi, driving the No. 91 Chevrolet Camaro for Trackhouse Racing, posted 27th time out of 39 entrants, but he thinks it’s a good start.
“Of course, I would like to drive more circles, because I felt that we had potential, but I was not sure which trajectories to choose,” the Finn commented with a smile following qualifying. – Circles were clearly not enough to put everything together, but I enjoyed it!
In general, everything went regarding as I expected, but there is always a difference between the sensations on the simulator and on the real track. Some nuances on the simulator are never reproduced, but at least I got an idea regarding the track.
I think that in the course of qualifying in some areas I had to act better, but in others, it seemed to me, I coped well. But everything is going well, because I did not count on anything and at the same time I ended up somewhere in the middle, so everything is fine.
In the evening, together with the team, we will continue to work so that I can better understand the rules and not make any stupid mistakes. It will also be necessary to do something with the car, because we know where we started and how we worked with the settings later. I hope we can improve something. Today we have already made progress between the first session and qualification – I hope this will be the case before the race.”
It’s worth adding that Kimi was the best European rider at Watkins Glen this weekend: with his 27th, he was only 1.347 seconds behind qualifying winner Chase Elliott; Mike Rockenfeller showed the 33rd result (-2.106 seconds), Daniil Kvyat – 36th (-2.652 seconds).
