Kimi Raikkonen says he showed he was willing to “sacrifice” his race pace for Ferrari in the Spanish Grand Prix to help it learn about its new updates.
Having been running the new parts during Friday practice, Raikkonen was unhappy with the car’s handing and switched back to its old specification. While he could have continued with the updated car, Raikkonen says it was more beneficial for the team to be able to compare the update on Vettel’s car with his own, even if it hurt his chances in the race as he finished fifth behind Valtteri Bottas.
“I think we learned a lot from going for two separate cars following yesterday and today so I’m more confident we can see things more balanced,” Raikkonen said. “Obviously in a test if you have a run coming up, you change a few things so sometimes the only way to do this and see the difference is to go with two cars at the same time on the circuit with different things.
“I think yesterday I was prepared to take the risk and sacrifice a little bit myself and if we can learn and we can speed up our learning and knowledge then that will obviously help us.”
With Vettel losing out to race winner Nico Rosberg by over 45 seconds, Raikkonen says he is unconcerned by the margin to Mercedes in Spain.
“Obviously I was doing my own race and I could sometimes see what happened with them but it felt like they were further away than they have been at some races. But this circuit the whole weekend has been difficult and they probably have a bit more downforce than us and more power. So conditions like this can easily make a big difference, bigger than normal.”
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