Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsFerrari

Raikkonen dismisses Rosberg's Ferrari claims

Kimi Raikkonen dismissed Nico Rosberg's claims that Ferrari and Mercedes are "very close" ahead of the 2016 season.

Following an impressive stint in the car on Tuesday morning which saw Rosberg set the fastest time of the day, the German claimed the two rivals are closely matched and set for a battle. However, Raikkonen insists no team knows what the others are doing and would not be drawn on predictions regarding Ferrari's relative competitiveness.

"I don’t know, nobody knows," Raikkonen said. "It’s pointless to just start guessing what will happen, we will know in quite a short time. The car feels good but it’s just lap times. We don’t know what everybody is doing, we know what we are doing and we are quite happy - how it is handling, how it is running - but there are still things to be fixed and things to try, to learn.

"At this circuit in these conditions it’s complete different to when we go to Australia, so who knows. I think we have a very good package, but is it good enough? Time will tell."

When asked about Rosberg's specific comments, Raikkonen replied: "Like I said really, it’s pointless to start guessing - you can do that and other people, but I don’t see the point of that.

"I have no idea what they are doing, they don’t know what we are doing. You can see the lap times, is it close or is it not, different tyres, different this and that. Like I said, we have a good feeling, we for sure have made quite a good progress over the winter, but is it going to be enough? Who knows. I think we are going to be more or less where we want to be but we will see."

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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.