Bahrain GP: Kimi Raikkonen preview

Kimi Raikkonen: "another difficult weekend"

Maranello, 22nd April 2009 - Unfortunately this was another difficult weekend for us. We didn't gain any points in China either, because reliability let us down again. Friday was very difficult. The car's set up was not bad, but we simply didn't have enough downforce compared to the others. On Saturday some aerodynamic updates, Felipe had the day before, were added also to my car. Therefore the qualifying went slightly better than we had expected. Unfortunately we opted not to use the KERS due to safety reasons, which had an impact on the performance in terms of a couple of tenths of a second. During the race I got stuck behind slower cars several times; that's when a little bit of extra performance would have helped. It seems as if things never go the right way in the rain, but I still like driving in wet weather: it's obvious that when grip and downforce are missing things are difficult.

We're without points, which doesn't make life easy for us. But we've already been in much more difficult situations. The Team has to stay focused and give it everything. There will be several updates at Barcelona and after this race we've got to understand where we are compared to the others.

The upcoming weekend we're in Bahrain, where we had several tests during the winter. The temperatures should be much higher here compared to the test sessions. Ferrari has won the races in the last two years here at the Sakhir circuit, but honestly I don't think it's possible this time. If we manage to have a flawless weekend this time, we can gain points and maybe even a place on the podium. Finally I want to say that I'm glad that Sebastian won the Chinese GP. He's a nice guy and he drove a great race. He deserved this success.

-credit: ferrari