Raikkonen makes up four places in F1 Sprint despite damage to Alfa Romeo floor following Stroll tangle

Kimi Raikkonen endured a Q1 elimination on Friday but the Alfa Romeo driver bounced back from 17th to 13th in the F1 Sprint, shrugging off early contact with Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll on his way at Silverstone.

Raikkonen was one of four drivers to begin the Sprint on soft tyres as the rest of the field opted for mediums, and was up to 13th by the end of Lap 1. But the Finn disputed the advantage that soft rubber gave him at the start of the race, adding that contact with Stroll on the first lap - at the high-speed Becketts section - and damage to his floor hampered him from making further progress.

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“I mean, obviously it’s always a bit better but I doubt there’s a lot between the two tyres at the start; it’s more if you get it right or wrong,” said Raikkonen. “It’s so easy to get it wrong and then you lose.

“We got some damage on the floor,” he added, “I think it was at the beginning of the race. We tried to fight; we are a bit too slow on the straight – we made some improvements from yesterday and we’ll see what happens tomorrow.”

Despite being eliminated in Q1 (on Friday) for the fourth successive time, Raikkonen will start Sunday’s British Grand Prix in 13th. And with free tyre choice for all in the Grand Prix, the veteran is leaning towards another soft-tyred start.

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“I wanted to try the soft also for tomorrow and they seemed to be pretty OK. I doubt they’ll be better or worse than the other tyres. We need to see what we’ll do tomorrow but we obviously got more fuel. We’ll try to do something,” concluded the Finn.

Raikkonen, who now gears up at Silverstone for his 339th Grand Prix start, scored his first and only point of the season so far in Azerbaijan and collided with Sebastian Vettel last time out in Austria.