Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsFerrari

Raikkonen defends Ferrari's strategy calls

40

Kimi Raikkonen has defended Ferrari's strategy in the Australian Grand Prix, saying the new tyre regulations played a part in uncertainty.

Ferrari was running first and second during the first stint of the race but opted to leave Raikkonen out for a number of laps more than third-placed Nico Rosberg, allowing the Mercedes to jump him. Both Ferraris were then left on supersoft tyres during a red flag period when a number of cars switched to mediums and ran to the end of the race, costing Sebastian Vettel a chance of victory.

Raikkonen retired shortly after the red flag and acknowledges Ferrari might have got the strategy wrong but says new tyre regulations - which allow teams to select from three compounds rather than two last year - made an obvious choice more difficult.

"Obviously we were thinking what to do, it was a different choice for different cars and now we have to see what would have been the best choice," Raikkonen said. "Obviously in my case it wouldn’t have made any difference because we had to retire.

"This year you have more choices with the tyres, so it’s a bit hard to chose and this weekend with tricky conditions we didn’t really know how the tyres would have worked."

And Raikkonen refused to criticise Ferrari for leaving him out for so long at the start of the race.

"During the pit stops it’s up to the team to decide, they can see the whole picture and we followed the plan. That cost us a place but that place was lost as soon as Rosberg stopped and jumped us immediately."

Australian Grand Prix - Quotes of the weekend

Australian Grand Prix - Driver ratings

Exclusive Q&A with Gene Haas after the Australian Grand Prix

Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter

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.