Scuderia Ferrari Finnish driver Kimi Raikkonen says that everybody at the Maranello team is “hurt” after engine issues afflicted both of its cars during the Malaysian Grand Prix weekend. The 2007 Formula One world champion, who qualified second, was unable to start Sunday’s race at Sepang, after Ferrari detected a technical problem on the reconnaissance laps. Mechanics wheeled him back to the garage in a bid to fix the issue, but his ‘retirement’ was officially confirmed a handful of laps into the race.
Scuderia Ferrari suspects that Kimi Raikkonen’s problem was similar to the one suffered by team-mate Sebastian Vettel in qualifying, leaving him at the back of the grid. Although Sebastian Vettel recovered to fourth, Kimi Raikkonen rued what might have been for himself and the team, given their outright pace at the track: “We don’t know what happened today, it’s too early to say. The car had been working perfectly all weekend and suddenly, out of nothing, we had an issue. It’s one of those things that unfortunately can happen. Car- and speed-wise we have been very good, but then unfortunately Seb had problems yesterday and we had ours today. I am pretty sure that I would have had a very good car today, but obviously you never know and it’s pointless to start guessing. We have a good package, but we have to take the most out of it. What happened today is very disappointing and hurts all of us, but there’s nothing we can change right now. The next race [in Japan] is a new challenge again, we will go there as in any race weekend, and then we’ll see where we are.” – Scuderia Ferrari Finnish driver Kimi Raikkonen explained as reported by the Italian media at the end of the 2017 Malaysian Grand Prix.
The Italian team is now 118 points behind Mercedes in the standings.
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