Burning blanket costs Kimi a set of tyres

Kimi Raikkonen cursed his luck after one of those days at the Spanish Grand Prix where even the tyre warmer turned up the heat on the Ferrari driver.

"So far the weekend has been more difficult than I wanted and today I was still struggling, for some reason my car was sliding around," said the Finn after qualifying only seventh fastest.

The 2007 Formula One world champion, whose teammate Sebastian Vettel qualified third, had decided on Friday night to revert to previous settings after failing to find the right balance.

"We knew it would be a risk and it might be difficult but I didn't think that the result would have been as bad as it was today," he said.

"It's one of those weekends in which things keep going a little wrong here and there, and today we also lost one set of medium tyres because of the burning of a [tyre warming] blanket."