The feel-good factor has returned at Ferrari, says Raikkonen

Kimi Raikkonen ended the first Formula One test of the 2015 season at Jerez in Spain with the quickest time of the week, and says that Ferrari has improved so much over the winter that he’s feeling confident about the season ahead.

Raikkonen lapped the track in 1m20.841s, a tenth quicker than new team-mate Sebastian Vettel achieved earlier in the test.

“I think the whole package is better all-round; the engine and the car itself, everything has improved,” said Raikkonen. “Obviously we still have a lot of hard work to try and improve things but it’s a good starting point.”

No comparisons to others just yet

Raikkonen refused to be drawn on comparing Ferrari’s pace to that of its rivals at Jerez. 

“We do our own stuff, we don’t know what the others are doing,” said Kimi. “Yesterday I said we had a good starting point and the team has done a good job over the winter to prepare this car. We have something to work with now. For sure, it’s much better than what we had last year.”

In terms of the team ending the day at the top of the times on three out of four occasions, he said: “No, it doesn’t mean much. The lap time can be anything but we’ve got a good amount of laps and things are working, we’re not really having many issues. That’s the main thing plus the feeling is pretty fine, so that’s good.”

Encouraged by solid reliability

Raikkonen is hugely encouraged by the lack of serious problems with the new SF15-T, which has helped enormously with its testing programme. 

“Yeah, no problems really,” he said. “No real big issues just a few small things. We got to do a lot of laps and the weather has been tricky today and yesterday, plus it was windy today. Not ideal but it’s the same for everyone.

“We did pretty OK in the first test and everybody seems to be happier and have a good feeling, so not a bad start.

“Compared to last year I found it much better but we still have a lot of things to work on an improve. But we have something we can work with and the team has done a good job over the winter to prepare and make this car so we can be happy about that.”