Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsFerrari

Raikkonen aiming for a win, but staying cautious

Kimi Raikkonen said that he wasn't about to get carried away this weekend in Japan despite Ferrari's double podium success at Singapore.

Raikkonen himself finished last week's race in third place, while his team mate Sebastian Vettel won the race after Mercedes' Lewis Hamilton retired midway through. But the Finn was being cautious about exactly what this might signal in terms of the relative form between the two rival teams heading into the Japanese Grand Prix this weekend.

"It hasn't changed since last time," Raikkonen said. "This year keeps going up and down and changes between the big teams so we'll have to wait and see.

"We wouldn't expect Mercedes to be struggling like they were at the last race, they've not been on that pace all year, so we expect them to be more like they've been up until the last weekend.

"There are different conditions today and probably tomorrow so who knows. We'll start tomorrow and see from there. It's pointless us guessing here: we can wait one, two days and see. Hopefully we'll be get to be in a good position but you never know.

"We'll go out and do our best and hopefully be up there giving ourselves good chances.

"Hopefully we can win, but that's the aim always. I wouldn't be here if I didn't believe that," added Raikkonen, who is still looking for his first win since his return to Ferrari in 2014 compared with Vettel who has taken three victories for the Scuderia so far this season.

"It hadn't been an ideal year, but there's good things and obviously we have to clear up some things from our side to ensure we get results in the end. If it happens this year then it happens, if not we try next year again but obviously the aim is to be first."

Raikkonen is now almost a hundred points in arrears from his team mate in the drivers championship standings, and with only six races left in the season the point is coming when he could be asked to take second chair in favour of supporting his team mate's title bid.

"We hope to have a good end for the championship for both of us, but obviously I'm not really in the championship," Raikkonen admitted. "If it comes to that I have no issues with it, I've done it before.

"We're here to fight for Ferrari, so who knows."

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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.