Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsFerrari

Raikkonen encouraged despite retirement

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Kimi Raikkonen says he had the pace to beat Felipe Massa to fourth place in the Australian Grand Prix before his retirement.

The Finn had dropped to eighth at the start of the race after being caught up in an incident at Turn 1, but recovered to fifth on a two-stop strategy when a loose left rear wheel following his second stop caused him to retire. Having also had a slow first pit stop with the left rear, Raikkonen admits it is frustrating to have so many issues but he is happy with the pace Ferrari showed.

"We had an issue and the wheel didn’t go fully as it should, so it came loose," Raikkonen said."[At the start] I got hit by [Carlos] Sainz [Jr] on the rear wheel, the floor got damaged at the rear. I then got hit by the Sauber quite heavily so it damaged the front wing.

"We have done a very good job over the winter. It is disappointing not to finish, without the issues and damage we had in the car, we could have caught up with the Williams after the pit-stop. Too many things didn’t go our way today."

Explaining his two slow pit stops - the second which caused him to retire after he left the pits - Raikkonen says the first problem was partly down to him.

"The first one, I think they dropped the front, for some reason my finger slipped a bit and the rear wheels turned a bit and it was difficult to get the rear wheel on, but the second one I don’t know."

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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.