Kimi Raikkonen says the pressure to succeed in Formula 1 comes from himself and not the teams he drives for. The 2007 world champion swapped seats with Charles Leclerc during the winter to bring his second stint at Ferrari to a close and complete a switch to Alfa Romeo, the team at which he made his F1 debut with in 2001 under its former Sauber guise.
Asked if he feels less pressure at Alfa Romeo than he did at Ferrari, Kimi replied:
“No, that’s not the case. I don’t feel the teams give you any pressure. For sure they work hard and they expect you to do it as well. I know what they expect from me, they hired me because they had some expectations, but I expect from myself a lot more than the other people would. I go with that and I’m happy when things are going well – but we always want to do better. I never felt in Ferrari, or in any other team I’ve been in, that I needed to do something that was not possible, or that I felt I was under pressure. I put the pressure on myself but for sure the team expects something from me. What they [Alfa Romeo] expect, I have no idea,” he added. “I haven’t asked and they haven’t told me directly to my face, “this is what you have to do”. I don’t think that would be right, because if they maybe expected me to be 7th or something, if I’m up to 7th place I’m not going to just sit and stay there. I’ll try to do the maximum I can and in the end, if we all do the maximum, then whatever the result is, that’s the best we could have done. What else can you do about it?” – he explained.
The 39-year-old Finn said it is difficult for the rebranded squad to set specific targets for 2019 given its current transition period, having improved to eighth place in the constructors’ championship last year.
“I want to do as well as possible,” Kimi said. “We know the top teams are big teams, but we have a good group of people, we have tools to do good cars and improve them. Obviously I want to help the team moving forward. Where are we going to get? I don’t know and nobody knows. We’ll find out in the future what we get and what we don’t get and we’ll see if we’re happy or not happy. The aim is to do as well as we can. I enjoy racing, we obviously want to win and fight for championships, but where we come from, as a team, we know roughly what to expect. Are we happy with it? Are we ever going to be happy? I don’t know. There’s a different thing for the future but we have our own realistic goals to where we can be and I think right now if we get everything absolutely right to the smallest detail for sure we can be 6th.” – he added.
Kimi Raikkonen insisted the way he approaches grand prix weekends is “no different” compared to his time at Ferrari, though he has noticed a difference due to living closer to Alfa Romeo’s Hinwil-based factory in Switzerland.
“For me, personally, it’s easier, because when I need or want to go to the factory it’s a lot easier,” he explained – “That’s probably the biggest change for me, maybe there’s less media and sponsors’ stuff to do. But it’s early days, I don’t know how it’s going to pan our through the year and I guess no one knows. But that part has never been too different, in the past in all the teams I’ve been in it was similar. Is it less this year? Probably, but when you look at the big picture the work in the races is the same.”
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