Kimi calls for calm at Ferrari
Kimi Raikkonen insists Ferrari should not panic about its situation in the championship following its disappointing form in Germany – but admits it needs to thoroughly analyse the reasons for its Hockenheim slump.
The world champion team had no answer to McLaren’s speed last weekend with its two cars finishing third and sixth respectively, despite its Woking rival gifting it the chance of an unlikely victory after its decision not to pit runaway race leader Lewis Hamilton under the safety car period initially looked to have backfired.
Raikkonen concedes dropping seven points adrift of Hamilton in the title race is a setback to his championship defence, but has faith Ferrari has the capability to resolve its current issues and fight back.
“It’s obvious that the situation has changed,” he said on Ferrari’s website.
“I’m seven points behind in the standings, as I was after the Canadian GP.
“The situation is quite complicated, but nothing is lost:
“We have to stay calm and react the way we know how to.”
“The desire to win hasn’t decreased at all: last year I had a period of six consecutive races without a success [win] and the same things is happening this year.
“Let’s hope that seven is my lucky number also this time and that I can get back to success immediately.”
Such was McLaren’s unexpected levels of dominance at Hockenheim, that Ferrari team boss Stefano Domenicali called for an immediate investigation into why the F2008 had struggled so badly on the medium downforce track.
Raikkonen himself suffered throughout the weekend with the handling of his car, before fighting a lack of grip on the way to sixth in the race, and has reiterated Domenicali’s concern.
“We have to check and analyse every single detail we’ve done during the preparations for Hockenheim and find out why we went so slowly, because there has to be something that didn’t work properly,” he said.
“Sometimes these things happen, when you want to improve the car.
“I’m confident: we’ll have a F2008 that can fight for the win again soon.”
The Finn added that he was glad to get the German round out of the way after labelling it as the worst of his whole season so far.
“I left Germany after a race weekend with the same feeling I had many times in the past: the best thing is that the weekend is over,” he said.
“It was certainly the most difficult weekend of the year: a horrible Friday, an even more complicated Saturday and a very bad Sunday.
“We never managed to find a good set up and the car had absolutely no stability.
“You need good grip to drive good lap times at Hockenheim, but the rear went all over the place for the whole race.
“It’s true that we had some problems at the beginning of the season to set up the car as I wanted, but we never had problems like we had at Hockenheim.”