Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsFerrari

Raikkonen unsurprised by future speculation

Kimi Raikkonen says he is not surprised to be the centre of speculation regarding his future at Ferrari.

The Finn’s current contract runs out at the end of this season, with an option in place for 2016. With Sebastian Vettel winning just his second race for Ferrari, Raikkonen has so far failed to match his team-mate and is currently 48 points adrift in the drivers’ championship. Valtteri Bottas and Daniel Ricciardo have both been linked with a Ferrari seat for next season, but Raikkonen says he isn’t surprised to hear rumours regarding his seat.

“Obviously [the team] make the decision,” Raikkonen said. “We try to do good races, the last race was a bit difficult but that’s part of the game. Sometimes you have that. Who knows? I don’t know anything more than you guys. It’s all been speculation since the start of the year and always the same stories so it doesn’t really surprise me.”

With Raikkonen spinning in Canada and then crashing out of the Austrian Grand Prix, he was asked if he is still happy with the handling of his car but insists Ferrari is making good progress.

“I don’t see why I wouldn’t suddenly like it. Just because I had an accident, it doesn’t change anything. Accidents happen, that’s part of the game. We improved the car, it’s still a great car, probably not fast enough to challenge the Mercedes all the time but it’s a very good car and it’s a massive improvement from last year.

“Things go wrong sometimes but it doesn’t mean that you suddenly hate the car or you don’t like things, it’s part of the game. It’s a good package. Obviously we want to improve and make it faster, things can always be better - even if you have a winning car you always want more out of it - but we’ve come such a long way from last year people forget it’s still a work in progress to improve things.”

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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.