British GP: Kimmi Raikkonen preview

Raikkonen: "sad to lose F1 as it is"

Silverstone, 18th June -- Wearing a thick white team fleece and a cap pulled down over his head, Kimi Raikkonen strode into the Silverstone paddock looking as though he had dressed for winter, on what's been a cold English summer day. It was straight to business facing the media to give them his expectations for the weekend. "We have some new parts on the car, but until we try them tomorrow, it's very hard to say how they will work out," began the Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro driver. This circuit is more high speed than many of the others we have visited so far this year, so at the moment, I really have no idea how we will compare to the others this weekend. Hopefully, the new parts will behave as we expect and then we can be closer to the front than at the last race, where the circuit was more difficult for us than the previous ones."

As usual at the British GP, the weather is never far off the top of the question list. "Usually when it rains here it rains a lot, but I've heard the weather should be better for the rest of the weekend," forecast the Finn. " Whatever the conditions, I have had quite good results here usually and it is a nice circuit. There are always some tracks where you go better than others for some reason or another and I do enjoy driving here, so hopefully we can have a good race and the crowd here gets very involved in the racing and they are very enthusiastic about Ferrari too which is nice."

The Scuderia is one of the few teams that has really persevered with the KERS power boosting system and Kimi was asked how it would work here. "It will be harder to charge up the system here as there is not very much braking, but we will use it and I am sure it will still be useful."

The delicate political struggle engulfing Formula 1 at the moment is due to continue over the weekend and while Kimi plans to concentrate on racing, he had this to say on the subject. "There are a lot of questions to be answered and to be honest, I don't think I'm aware of all the details, so let's wait and see what happens tomorrow. But I don't think we will know exactly what will be the final outcome for quite a while yet. I am sure the team will race somewhere, I still have a contract and will race wherever they want me to. Of course, we all want to be in the proper Formula 1 as it has been in the past, with good rules. But it is not up to the drivers what happens. I will race for the team: if it's Formula 1 then that's great because that's where I want to be, as it is the most important series in the world, with the best drivers. It would be sad to lose F1 as it is."

-credit: ferrari