Minor brake issues prevented Kimi Raikkonen making it past the second session of qualifying in Mexico, although fire damage to his car meant he was due a grid drop regardless.

Raikkonen's qualifying day got off to a bad start when his car caught fire after four laps in final practice, damaging the power unit and the gearbox. Ferrari managed to fit an old engine and new gearbox to his car in time for qualifying -- translating into a five-place grid penalty -- but brake issues meant he did not have any hope of making it out of Q2.

"In the morning we had an issue and had to stop the car," Raikkonen explained. "We had to change to an older engine we had already run before and also change the gearbox, because we had a fire in the car. Obviously there was not a lot of time to get the car ready for qualifying, but the mechanics still managed to do it, so that was one of the few positive things today.

"With the limited time we had to prepare the car we ended up having a small issue with the brakes. The plan was just to get into Q2, because we knew we were going to get a penalty for the gearbox change and it didn't make sense to go through to Q3, because like this we can at least choose what tyres we use at the start of the race.

"It was a difficult day, we always try to do our best but sometimes we have issues and we try to deal with them as well as we can."

Raikkonen said reverting back to the old engine, which is the pre-U.S. Grand Prix upgrade, would be a disadvantage, but did not rule out Ferrari making more changes to the spec of the engine ahead of the race. It would mean more penalties, but Raikkonen is due to start from 18th regardless due to his existing gearbox penalty.

"If there weren't differences [between the old- and new-spec engine] we wouldn't use new specs if we didn't think they were better. There's always, even between a new and an old engine, a small gain, but we'll see. We're at the back of the grid, so whatever we do it won't really change our starting position. We're free to do what we want, really."