Alfa Romeo Racing Finnish driver Kimi Raikkonen full Thursday press conference (video) + full transcript ahead of the 2019 Russian GP
Kimi, frustrating race for you in Singapore, different kind of street track here, with longer straights. How confident are you of having a better weekend?
Kimi RÄIKKÖNEN: Never know really but I think it should be better for us – hopefully it is. I think Singapore, some points, it felt pretty OK, mainly not, but I think maybe our car is not the best over the bumps and things that you need for Singapore but yeah, let’s see how it comes – but I would expect to be a bit better here.
…better because of the smooth track surface or better because of the Ferrari power unit? Why do you think it will be better?
KR: Just track layout and how the surface is and everything. I might be wrong but hopefully not. Hopefully we have a bit more smoother weekend, a bit more speed.
Q: Now Kimi, this is a bit of a landmark race for you. It’s race number 307, which takes you to third overall in the most-experienced list. You’re surpassing Schumacher and Jenson Button this weekend. When you started out in 2001, did you ever imagine you’d be around for this long?
KR: Definitely not. I think I was wishing to stop much earlier. I kind of stopped it already but no, for sure not. I don’t think I had any ideas how long. Hopefully at least one or two years. Things have turned out a bit different – but I didn’t really have a plan before, I still don’t. We’ll try to go good things and as long as we enjoy it, obviously we’ll keep racing and see what happens.
Q: Given the competitive nature of this sport, do you take a lot of pride in your longevity?
KR: Not really. I mean, to me, as long as I feel myself that I can drive where I expect to be, and I can do things as I, in my head, I feel I should, then I’m happy to keep going, plus, as long as the racing is the bigger part than all the other nonsense. I don’t really think ‘Oh, I’ve done this much racing, and it’s a great thing’. For me, the results are much more important than another other fact. Maybe the day you stop, and after a while when you look backwards, it means something. But right now, no.
Do you welcome more races yourself? We understand the pressures on the team but from a driving point of view do you welcome more?
KR: I don’t know. It depends really where we go. If we raced in Europe I wouldn’t mind but it’s obviously much easier for everybody. It’s nice to race on new tracks, hoping that they’re good ones for racing but we will see. Usually it’s a habit to keep changing races and some come and some go. We never know until we get there.
Kimi, what about a race in St Petersburg from your point of view?
KR: We go where the race is. I would guess that there’s Finns, I guess there’s Finns watching here, I’m sure. It’s a lot easier, for sure.
Do you like the current qualifying format?
KR: Yeah. But if I would change, I would go back to where it was when I started: one hour of time and I think there were three sets of tyres and 12 laps, do it when you want those. Over the years, there have been many different ways of doing it. Honestly I don’t know if it really changed the entries an awful lot so…
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