Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsFerrari

Raikkonen explains disastrous Monza start

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Kimi Raikkonen believes he was not at fault for his disastrous start in the Italian Grand Prix which left him in last place at the first corner.

The Finn secured his best grid position since 2013 by qualifying second at Monza on Saturday, but his car went in to anti-stall when the lights went out and he was at the back of the field by Turn 1. While he delivered an impressive recovery drive to fifth place, Raikkonen said Ferrari needs to investigate why he had the problem at the start.

"It went into anti-stall when I let the first clutch go and as far as I understood, I did the correct thing but obviously we can see there was a problem in the second clutch in the way that it was not in the correct place," Raikkonen says. "I’m pretty sure I put everything correct as always but I don’t know exactly. Whatever it was, it triggered the anti-stall and obviously after a few seconds I was in last place.

"After that we did the best that we could. I’m obviously quite disappointed, the race was OK, I finished 5^th but when you start in 2^nd place and you end up in last place at the first corner, so it’s not ideal. It’s a bit disappointing but you have to learn on those and hopefully make a better result."

While Raikkonen points to the rest of his performance - aside from the start - as reason for optimism, he says Ferrari needs to ensure it is maximising its potential more often with both cars.

"Obviously it’s not ideal, we were in a good position for the start then after a few seconds we were in last. The front row didn’t help us a lot but like I said, the race was OK and the weekend has been good, good apart from that issue.

"Obviously it’s fine to get back to 5^th but like I said earlier, we started from second place and have that kind of start and end up in last place. It’s a bit disappointing but not the first time unfortunately that this happened after the race weekend.

"I’m sure we’re doing the right things but we keep having issues and compromising our race big time so, we’ll keep trying and I’m sure things will get better soon."

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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.