Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsFerrari

Raikkonen bemoans ‘not driving very well’

Kimi Raikkonen says one of the main problems for him during Friday practice for the Australian Grand Prix was the fact he was “not driving very well”.

Ferrari emerged as the closest challenger to Mercedes in FP2 as Sebastian Vettel was third quickest ahead of Raikkonen in fourth. Speaking over team radio before Vettel beat his lap time by 0.4s, Raikkonen admitted he had completed a poor lap and he says there is more to come from himself after a largely encouraging start.

“In testing it was a big improvement already and the team has done a good job over the winter,” Raikkonen said. “There is still hard work to do but we have to start somewhere and if you compare it to last year it is a big step.

"Not an ideal day, [I was] not driving very well or putting the lap together. We chased the car a little bit on the longer runs and it seems to work a bit better, it was just tough to put things together.

"We know where we expect ourselves to be and it's only Friday. We still have work to do. I just have to put things together and drive a good lap and we should be OK."

Click here for Friday's gallery from the Australian Grand Prix

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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.