Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsFerrari

Arrivabene challenges Raikkonen over contract

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Ferrari team principal Maurizio Arrivabene has told Kimi Raikkonen he will only receive a contract extension if his performances are good enough this year.

Raikkonen's current deal expires at the end of this season, though there is an option for a further year in 2016 if both sides agree to continue. The Finn hinted he would like to remain at Ferrari on Thursday, saying it was up to the team if he stays or not, and Arrivabene says he has told Raikkonen his performances will need to earn him an extension.

"It's early to talk," Arrivabene said. "He was telling me about the contract and I said to him, it depends on your performance. And Kimi, he’s the kind of person that he appreciates when you’re talking with him in a very transparent way and straight to his face.

"Kimi knows, now it’s early to talk about this at the moment. I’m happy about the performance of Kimi but he needs to push and he knows that."

One area Raikkonen himself admits he needs to improve is with his qualifying performances, but asked if he's made any changes ahead of this afternoon's session in Bahrain Raikkonen replied: “No I haven’t.

"Obviously it’s just a mistake. In qualifying you push on the limit and it’s an awful lot easier to go over the limit when you’re on it. You only have one try on a new set of tyres and if you make a mistake the lap is gone usually, so you just try to make the best out of it after that. It’s just a part of the game and hopefully we start getting it more right but it would help us a lot for the race.”

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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.