Kimi Raikkonen explains that Scuderia Ferrari is in a much better position as compared to last season ahead of the 2017 Formula 1 championship, which will begin at the end of March. With less than two weeks until the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne, that is scheduled to take place on March 26, the Italian team has impressed during the two pre-season testing sessions, as Kimi Raikkonen managed to set the fastest lap time at the Circuit de Catalunya, while his teammate Sebastian Vettel was close behind.
Scuderia Ferrari was not able to match the speed and engine power of Mercedes in recent years and last season the Maranello side had to settle for a disappointing third place in the constructors’ championship, far behind rivals Mercedes and even Red Bull Racing, but Kimi Raikkonen is confident that Ferrari now has a reasonable chance of fighting with its main rivals:
“I think everything was more or less pretty positive. The new car has been running well and the feeling since the first day has been pretty good for both drivers. I think the team has done a very good job over the winter, preparing the car and making it reliable.” – the Finnish driver said, as reported by ESPN Sports Media Limited – “If you compare to the situation from one year ago we are much, much better in many ways. But where are we going to be in the first race? I have no idea. It’s the same story every winter and we will see in a few weeks.” – Kimi added.
Despite setting the fastest lap time in winter testing, the Scuderia Ferrari driver confirms that the SF70H has even more potential and should go faster when the Formula 1 season begins: “Obviously you try to go as fast as you can whatever you decide to do, but there are a lot of things looking at it afterwards where we can improve and do better. That is part of testing. For sure we can go faster but it was not the main purpose of this thing. We can be quite pleased with what we have achieved during testing, but it is early days and we haven’t done a single race yet, so let’s see when the season starts.” – Kimi Raikkonen concluded.
