Testy Raikkonen tells Alfa team to 'wake up'

Kimi Raikkonen urged his Alfa Romeo team to "wake up and do something" about improving the pace of its C41 after the Finn finished last weekend's British Grand Prix once again outside the points.

Raikkonen, who lined up P13 on the grid at Silverstone progressed up to tenth before on pitstop on 18 pushed him back down the order.

The Finn recovered to 11th, but a chance to finish in the points was squashed by a run-in in the closing stages of the race with Red Bull's Sergio Perez that left him just P15 at the checkered flag.

On the cool down lap, Raikkonen's race engineer rued the late spin over the radio: "It's a shame the accident with Perez, we could have maybe scored".

But the Iceman snapped back to tell his team in no uncertain terms what he felt.

"Maybe, or maybe we need to make the car fast, it's simple," he quipped.

"It’s impossible to fight against them. Save this, save that, and try to fight with the other cars. Come on, you’ve got to wake up and do something about it."

Raikkonen later explained his skirmish with Perez and the disappointing outcome.

"I think over the race we had some battles, and obviously they were a lot faster. But I managed to keep him behind quite a long time," he said.

"And in the end, we were a couple of corners next to each other and then I was outside the previous corner, inside the next, and I don’t know, maybe he didn’t see me, but I ended up spinning and that’s about it.

"I was OK there and then suddenly he just turned in and then I went. But I’d much rather fight for the position. Finishing 11th or 12th doesn’t really help us.

"We kind of expected it was not going to be an easy race for us here and that’s how it turned out to be.

"After the start we were pretty OK, but the longer we go, the more I’m watching in the mirrors more than forward.

"We tried to fight, but it wasn’t enough here. Maybe at some other track we can be a bit better off, but you know, what can you do?"

• Read also: F1i's Driver Ratings for the 2021 British Grand Prix

Alfa Romeo's head of trackside engineering Xevi Pujolar acknowledged that the Hinwil squad was missing the pace to earn itself a spot among the top ten.

"We knew again that we would be fighting close to the points," said the Spaniard. "And then if something happened in front, we can get quite close. But we’re missing a bit more.

"We tried to go on the aggressive side with Kimi, boxing quite early, but we needed a bit more pace to get close to the points in the middle of the race."

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