Kimi Raikkonen: “In Turkey, I have limited the damage” 

Written by David on May 13th, 2008 at 6:41 pmLast Update: May 13th, 2008 at 6:41 pm

Kimi Raikkonen“I like to play golf. After Turkey I’ve got the same feeling like having a bogey, when playing golf. I went to Istanbul leading the championship by 9 points and I came back home leading the championship by 7 points. You can count it any way you like, but for me it’s more or less the same it was”. Kimi Raikkonen knows for sure that in Turkey, thanks to the third place, he was able to limit the damage against his rivals and that’s what counts. “Obviously I had a very difficult weekend,” said the Finn.

“The one that starts with problems, goes on with problems, but – thank Heaven – didn’t finish too badly. For sure I would just want to fight for wins. But this is racing. Sometimes it just goes wrong since the very beginning of the weekend. While you are not able to get everything right, you just try to focus on saving all you can. To limit the damage, like I did in Turkey this time. I finished third. Obviously, after having a look at all that happened I cannot be terribly disappointed after walking away from there with six points.”

The Finn reminds also that “the Turkish weekend began badly on Friday morning. I was on my first flying lap while something went wrong with the gear shifting. After that I had to wait until the afternoon to carry on the work. The weather was good in the morning, but there was some rain in the afternoon so I wasn’t able to get a proper picture of my car and the tyres. The Saturday morning wasn’t that much better and I had to go to the qualifying without the best possible setup.”

“Obviously, at the end of the day, the car was pretty good with a heavier fuel, but I made a slight mistake in my lap and that cost too much. I got the fourth place in the grid and that really hurts me. My start wasn’t good either. I was side by side with Heikki. It was tight, but I thought I could go pass him. He turned quite early in and then there was no room at all. I slowed down as much as I could, but my front wing touched lightly his rear tyre. I lost a part of the front wing. There were people passing me from the right and then I was sixth after the first corner.”

Even the aerodynamic balance, says Raikkonen “wasn’t working as I wanted it to work, but there wasn’t time to change the wing. It would have cost more time compared to the time I lost using it to the finish. Afterwards, it could be always easy to say that I could have done differently. I never do that and this case is closed. So far, Barcelona has been the only weekend I have had no problems at all. Hopefully Monte Carlo will be the next good race for me and I can do whatever I want to.”

For the Monaco Grand Prix, the Finn seems confident. “I have a good feeling, we’ll have a strong car there. Now we’ll test a couple of days in France. The whole team is very, very motivated, preparing to go to the circuit, where we were not competitive last year.”

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