Kimi Raikkonen is confident that Scuderia Ferrari will manage “to put things in perfect order” for his driving style and have a better feeling of the SF70H car, which will give him the possibility of challenging Mercedes for race wins alongside German team-mate Sebastian Vettel.
Sebastian Vettel had a perfect start of the new Formula 1 season and scored an impressive victory for Scuderia Ferrari at the Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne, while Kimi Raikkonen on the other hand endured a frustrating race and did not seem able to produce the same race pace, as he had to settle for fourth place in the end, 22 seconds off his team-mate and without the possibility of fighting for a podium finish with the two Mercedes drivers. The 2007 Formula One world champion says that Ferrari has already identified the cause of the understeer that prevented him from keeping up with the first three drivers during the early stages of the race, while using the ultra-soft tyres, and once the problem is solved Scuderia Ferrari can hope to fight for 1-2 finishes on the podium: “When we put things in perfect order we can finish 1-2” – Kimi Raikkonen said, as reported by Italian daily newspaper La Stampa – “It’s good for him (Vettel), good for the team. We have a good base, a good car, but there is still a lot to work on. It’s a long championship and we just have to see how it goes. It’s a bit disappointing where I finished but we know what we have to do from here. At least this time we finished, after quite a few years where we didn’t finish this race, but it’s obviously not the ideal start for me” – the Finnish driver added.
“This is not one hundred per cent what we wanted, but I’ll take it. Even if it’s disappointing I’m pretty happy we understood quite a lot of things over the weekend. It was a good race for the team, we won the first race, so we have a lot of good things and a foundation to build from.” – Kimi Raikkonen concluded.
His forth place at the 2017 Australian Grand Prix represents Kimi’s best start to a Formula 1 championship since back in 2013 when he won the race at the Albert Park circuit for Lotus – which up to date remains his last Formula One win. Scuderia Ferrari’s most recent 1-2 finish in F1 came in the 2010 German Grand Prix, when Felipe Massa had to hand the race win to Fernando Alonso after receiving radio indications from the Ferrari management.
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