Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsFerrari

Vettel wanted Raikkonen battle in Melbourne

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Sebastian Vettel says he was disappointed not to be able to fight team-mate Kimi Raikkonen during last week's Australian Grand Prix.

An impressive start by both Ferrari drivers saw Vettel lead his team-mate out of turn two in Melbourne, with the pair running strongly in the opening stint. A strategic error during the red flag period ultimately cost Vettel a chance of victory, while Raikkonen himself was forced to retire shortly after the race resumed.

Vettel - who was not allowed to be told what had caused Raikkonen to stop during the race - says the way the two were closely-matched in Melbourne left him hoping he would be fighting the Finn for victory early on.

"I think as a team obviously we try to score as many points as possible," Vettel said. "I think you could see in the first stint that there wasn’t much between Kimi and myself. I think we were very close [all] weekend and ideally we would have fought for the same place on the track.

"I have no problems with Kimi, I get along well with him and equally, in general the first guy that I want to do well other than myself obviously is Kimi, so it’s a shame that he didn’t see the chequered flag."

Raikkonen - who beat Vettel in Bahrain last season - expects Ferrari to be as competitive in at the second race as it was in Australia.

"We go to another race, we obviously have to work on certain things, improve and make sure we don’t have any issues," Raikkonen said. "It’s a completely different circuit from [Melbourne], the conditions will be completely different too, but I don’t see why things should change an awful lot. Let’s wait and see what you can do."

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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.