F1 News, Reports and Race Results

Arrivabene: Raikkonen asked for strategy switch

Ferrari team principal Maurizio Arrivabene has revealed that Kimi Raikkonen's switch to a two-stop strategy at the Mexican Grand Prix came after the Finn complained that his medium tyres were gone.

While most of the front-runners, including Raikkonen’s team-mate Sebastian Vettel, pitted only once in last Sunday’s 71-lap contest, the 2007 world champion stopped again to take a set of used mediums, which dropped him from fifth to seventh.

When asked why Raikkonen made that extra pit stop, Arrivabene replied: “Because he asked for it.

“He said the tyres were gone and our strategy with Kimi was equal to the one of Seb, but he was asking and complaining about the tyre status and then we changed immediately the strategy and pitted him.

“Sometimes if the driver is not really convinced about the behaviour of the tyre, the best way to do it is to re-do their strategy and we had a plan-B to call him in, calm him down and send him out.”

Raikkonen reveals that the rationale behind the strategy switch was also to force Red Bull’s hand and pit third-placed Max Verstappen again.

“I think we could have run quite a bit longer with the first set [of softs] but saying that afterwards it’s always easy,” the Finn said. “Once we put the medium tyres on the grip was quite poor overall.

“It wasn’t a disaster but they had quite poor grip. It was the first time I ran them this weekend, I’m sure they would have lasted the distance but I was hoping the next set would be a lot better.

“But it was pretty much the same – we tried to do something and if any good came out of it, it was that we pushed Red Bull to make a second stop too, as we were trying to beat Ricciardo and that helped Seb’s race a bit.”

Raikkonen eventually recovered to sixth place by the flag after overtaking Force India’s Nico Hulkenberg.

2016 Mexican Grand Prix - Driver ratings

REPORT: Hamilton keeps title hopes alive with Mexico win

Breakfast with Stefan Johansson 15 minutes with ... Nico Rosberg

Silbermann says ... Masked in Mexico

2017 driver line-ups so far

Julien Billiotte

Recent Posts

Las Vegas GP: Thursday's action in pictures

The opening day of running at the Las Vegas GP was a smooth but chilly…

44 mins ago

Williams' headaches persist into Vegas practice

Williams is continuing to fight uphill battles this weekend in Las Vegas as a knock-on…

2 hours ago

Ferrari's Sainz 'not satisfied with where we are' in Vegas

It was a solid start to the Las Vegas weekend for Ferrari with Carlos Sainz…

3 hours ago

Norris labels McLaren long-run pace ‘shocking’ in chilly Vegas

Lando Norris didn’t hold back in his assessment of McLaren’s performance on the opening day…

4 hours ago

Hamilton delighted with ‘consistently strong day’ in Vegas

Lewis Hamilton was particularly happy with his opening day of running at the Las Vegas…

6 hours ago

Verstappen stuck with 'draggy' rear wing for Vegas

Red Bull fears that its prospects for this weekend's Las Vegas Grand Prix - which…

6 hours ago