Kimi Räikkönen has made up for lost time

In the space of two minutes, Ferrari thought everything was lost: Sebastian Vettel saw his engine catch fire during the formation lap and Kimi Räikkönen had a disastrous start, which relegated him far down the standings at the end of the first lap: « The start wasn’t ideal but, fortunately, we didn’t lose too many positions in the first lap. »

Nevertheless, the Finn managed to recover thanks to a three-stop strategy that worked well. The Ferrari also showed interesting speed, which could give hope for the future: « After that, I tried to catch up and was able to overtake a few cars and make the most of it. We managed good pit stops with the right tire choices. The speed was also pretty good. »

Kimi Räikkönen even believes he could have threatened Nico Rosberg towards the end of the race, even if the German was more focused on preserving his car: “At the end, we were able to close in a bit on the Mercedes in front of us but I was never close enough to try to pass Nico. Considering where we were at the end of the first lap, it’s a satisfying result but it’s not yet where we want to be. We need to keep working and improving.”

But while Kimi Räikkönen was able to score his first points of the year after his mechanical failure in Melbourne, Ferrari was not able to score points with both cars in the same race due to a failure, this time on Sebastian Vettel’s car. He did not expect to be stopped as early as the formation lap: « The problem surprised us, both me and the entire team, as I was approaching turn 11. We now need to understand exactly what happened and learn from it. It’s not ideal and we can’t be proud of it. »

After just two races, Ferrari already finds itself 50 points behind Mercedes. The Scuderia has therefore almost used up all its jokers for the season…

With the participation of www.racingbusiness.fr