Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsFerrari

Vettel keen for Raikkonen to stay

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Sebastian Vettel says he wants Kimi Raikkonen to stay at Ferrari next season following speculation regarding his future.

Raikkonen said in Bahrain it is up to Ferrari whether he is retained for an extra year or not, with the team holding an option for 2016. With Valtteri Bottas having been linked with a move to Maranello as Raikkonen's replacement, Vettel says he wants his current team-mate to be retained.

"I don’t mind too much, obviously my contract is a little bit longer than Kimi’s contract but I think if he continues here it will be positive for the team because they know him from the time he was here before and over the past few years," Vettel said. "It is important that you work well together as a team and as far as those first couple of races have been that is the case for the both of us."

Looking at this weekend's Spanish Grand Prix, Vettel is pinning his hopes on Ferrari's updates allowing it to close up even further on Mercedes.

"Well I hope everybody is right. We will wait and see what happens on Sunday. Barcelona historically has always been a place where teams have brought updates to its cars, sometimes bigger or smaller. We’ve probably done the same as everyone else but hopefully we’ll have a bigger update and a better lap time to catch up to the guys in front, Mercedes."

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.