Kimi Raikkonen is hoping for warmer race day weather which better suits the Lotus, while Romain Grosjean faces an uphill climb after a gearbox penalty demoted him to ninth on the grid.

Kimi Raikkonen was pleasantly surprised on two fronts in the first-ever qualifying session at the Circuit of the Americas, ahead of the 2012 United States Grand prix in Austin, Texas.

One was the warmer weather that they encountered after a chilly Friday; and the other was the pace of the Lotus in qualifying trim. Raikkonen felt that the two were not unrelated.

"I was actually expecting a more difficult qualifying session today, but the car was the best it's felt all weekend so it turned out to be quite good," said the Finn, who posted the fifth fastest time in the last part of qualifying on Saturday. "The warmer conditions make the car work much better and that certainly makes a difference."

Raikkonen was out-qualified by his team mate Romain Grosjean who set the fourth fastest time in Q3, but the Frenchman has a five-place grid penalty that will drop him down to ninth on the grid and raise Raikkonen up to fourth - which was not great news as far as the former world champion was concerned.

"Starting on the dirty side of the grid maybe isn't the best," he admitted, concurring with speculation from some teams that starting on the 'even-numbered' side of the grid could cost a driver one or even two positions off the grid in the run up to turn 1.

"It's been very slippery anyhow, the circuit, and then the racing line goes more or less over the right-hand side so we expect it's going to be very slippery on the left.

read more