Raikkonen rues Istanbul qualifying error

Since this morning Kimi Raikkonen is on the track at Monza for the first of the three days, where the Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro is holding tests along with almost all the other teams with the Italian Grand Prix in sight. Before Kimi got on board of his F2007 he confided to his own website and to that of his team his thoughts about the race at Istanbul.

Kimi Raikkonen, Scuderia Ferrari.

Photo by xpb.cc.

"First of all the positive things. I went to Turkey hoping that I could reduce the gap to the leader and that is what happened," Kimi said. "Honestly, I thought reducing the gap by four points would have been possible if everything had gone perfectly well. But that wasn't the case, in one way or the other the gap came down by four points. That was the best thing at the weekend."

"After every race I get asked how the championships will proceed and my answer is always the same: we have to wait until the last race in Brazil to be able to say for sure, because anything can happen. Istanbul was a fine example: Hamilton was doing well and racing for high points but then unexpectedly he had a tire failure; nevertheless he collected some points, but not as many as he had hoped for. He will certainly give his best until then end, but that is what we will also do. You can't take anything for granted and we have to push to the maximum race after race."

"Since the qualifying I knew that the race was to be like that. If on Saturday all would have gone well, I could have caught the pole. But after I had been beaten by my teammate I knew that my cards had already been played. When you know when your teammate is going to pit, there is hardly anything to do, above all if you are the one who has to stop before him. Today's Formula One is like that: Whoever is ahead rules, especially when you have the same strategy."

"With these cars it is practically impossible to stay behind another car and looking for an opportunity to overtake. There is too much turbulence and every time you get close you can feel a heavy understeering. To be able to overtake you have to be a second faster than the car ahead of you or you need profit from an error by the driver. I got really close to Felipe just once, but we were at the end of the second stint. My car was really, really good: I could have gone much faster than I was."

"The most important thing was that the team gained as many points as possible, so there was no point in taking unnecessary risks. Anyway, we have reduced the gap: that is what we wanted, but just like in Budapest my race was quite boring. Thinking about what could have been done in a different way doesn't change anything. I made a mistake in my last attempt in Q3 and I paid the consequences. I hope that next time we will have a perfect weekend."

Kimi also gave an outlook for the immediate future: "Monza is waiting for us; there we have to push to the maximum, as ever. I think that Ferrari will also have a very competitive car there, for the home race. For me it will be the first time in Monza as a Ferrarista: I have to say that I really feel the difference to the past, I'd also like to say that I've always had a very good relationship with the Italian fans. It would be nice winning and celebrating together! It will be tough. I know from experience that McLaren is very strong there. It wasn't by chance that they won the pole here last year. Having said that, let's go to Monza and win."

-credit: ferrari