Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsFerrari

Weather not a factor in Ferrari engine plan - Raikkonen

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Kimi Raikkonen says the wet weather hitting the United States Grand Prix would not have impacted on the team's engine plans.

Ferrari has introduced a new power unit for this weekend's race at Circuit of the Americas, with both drivers taking a ten place grid penalty as a result. With heavy rain and thunderstorms seeing little running in FP1 before FP2 was cancelled completely, when asked if Ferrari may have reconsidered its approach had it known about the weather, Raikkonen replied: “No I don’t think so.

"It was made already before the season started so we have been doing as we planned already in the first part of the year and I think it’s been the correct choice. We’ve been doing good things, it’s one of those things that we planned and we are going to stick with it and I think it’s the correct things, so whatever the conditions are doesn’t change that much.”

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And Raikkonen says there remains the chance for Ferrari to take advantage of the conditions regardless of its starting position in Austin.

“It’s always more of a gamble isn’t it? So there’s always more chances for odd races so obviously it can go for you or against you. Let’s see what it brings, we are guessing now, we’ll see how tomorrow is and then what comes after that we cannot find out tomorrow.

"Hopefully we get proper conditions, at least on Sunday and we can do qualifying and the race then if not tomorrow. It’s a shame for everybody. Everybody comes here and we cannot drive because of the conditions and the spectators can’t see anything but we can’t do anything about the conditions.”

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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.