Arrivabene explains Raikkonen's Monaco struggles

40

Ferrari team principal Maurizio Arrivabene says Kimi Raikkonen struggled in Monaco because he simply doesn't like the circuit.

Raikkonen was off the pace in qualifying and then retired early in the race after sliding wide at the Loews hairpin and damaging his front wing. With the wing lodged under the front wheels, Raikkonen was forced to park the car at the Nouvelle Chicane and Arrivabene says Ferrari just has to acknowledge the Finn is not strong in Monaco.

"Every driver that I’ve known from the past has a track that they don’t like," Arrivabene said. "Kimi doesn’t like Monaco even if he won once here. We need not to complain about Kimi but to accept that this race he was probably suffering at this track more and he will be pushing to do his best for the rest of the season."

Raikkonen himself described his weekend as "very poor", with the retirement dropping him from second in the drivers' championship at the start of the race to fourth place behind race-winner Lewis Hamilton and Daniel Ricciardo.

While Sebastian Vettel is now one point behind Raikkonen and 46 points adrift of championship leader Nico Rosberg, Arrivabene does not feel the title is slipping away from Ferrari.

"No way. No way, because you saw the result from here is quite good, Hamilton is coming back and what we have to do is keep our concentration, keep focus on the races and to look forward. I think this championship is going to be quite interesting I think."

Scene at the 2016 Monaco Grand Prix

Monaco Grand Prix - Quotes of the week

Driver ratings - Monaco Grand Prix

Technical feature: What will the 2017 F1 cars look like?

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.