Kimi Raikkonen says his grid penalty for taking a new gearbox resulted in a “a lot of disappointment”, with the Ferrari driver spending most of his Japanese Grand Prix stuck in traffic.
Having qualified a strong third at Suzuka, the Finn had to line up only eighth after the Scuderia made an unscheduled gearbox change on his SF16-H ahead of Sunday’s race.
“I had a good start but there was nowhere to go,” Raikkonen told Sky Sports Italia. “I got stuck behind people and it was really difficult to follow. Once I got past, the car was handling well. It was hard to stay close to them during the race and attack them. But on its own, the car was behaving well.”
The 2007 world champion was able to utilise his competitive pace to recover to fifth behind team-mate Sebastian Vettel, but he believes a better result was on the cards had he not suffered his grid setback.
“It’s a lot of disappointment but I think we had a good car but obviously if we could have run at the front and in clean air, we would not have lost speed but what can you do? This is how it went unfortunately for sure and it was not ideal.”
Ferrari dropped another four points in its fight with Red Bull for second in the Constructors’ championship. The Scuderia is now trailing the Milton Keynes-based outfit by 50 with four races to go in 2016.
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