The short
holidays in August for the Formula One teams are over and
tomorrow they all meet in Istanbul for the start of the
upcoming Turkish GP, the twelfth race of the season 2007.
This is true also for Kimi Raikkonen. "The holidays are over
and they were as I hoped them to be: I enjoyed the Finnish
summer with my family and my best friends," said Kimi. "We
went to the sea, did some motocross, played tennis and, the
most important thing, chilled out.
"Now I'm ready to get back on the track. We have to confront
the last part of the season, the one in which everything
will be decided. There are three races in four weeks, plus a
test: this is certain to be a very busy period, but we are
racing on tracks, which are amongst my favourites -
Istanbul, Monza and Spa-Francorchamps. I think that these
are tracks where Ferrari should be very competitive: there
are no characteristics, that are against us. The whole team
is working together, to try to recuperate the gap in the
points: in Maranello they didn't stop working over the last
days! I spoke to the technicians and they told me that we
have a couple of new developments in the car."
With two thirds of the championship behind him, Kimi is able
to make a first summary of his experiences at Ferrari: "As I
said immediately after Hungary on the occasion of the Shell
event in Helsinki, there is great harmony inside the team:
now I understand the difference between being a driver for
Ferrari as compared to the other teams. We only concentrate
on what we have to do, 100 percent.
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"We have to give our best and hope that those who
are ahead of us, have slight problems," says Kimi
Raikkonen, "I don't have much to lose so I can risk
more than my colleagues at McLaren." |
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"There are three races in four weeks," says Kimi
Raikkonen, "this is certain to be a very busy
period, but we are racing on tracks, which are
amongst my favourites - Istanbul, Monza and Spa." |
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"I will confront these last races in the same spirit I
confronted the ones before: I'll try to win and collect as
many points as possible and then we will do the maths in the
classification. We have to give our best and hope that those
who are ahead of us, have slight problems: I don't have much
to lose so I can risk more than my colleagues at McLaren.
Six races can seem to be only a few, but for the ones who
are leading it's a lot.
"We were able to see that over the last weekend at the Rally
of Germany, where Gronholm paid a high price for a bad day.
We are optimistic for Turkey: I won the first race ever held
here, which gave me a very special feeling. The track is
similar to the one at Silverstone and Spa-Francorchamps,
where the aerodynamic efficiency counts a lot. And then we
drive anti-clockwise: nothing changes in terms of the
techniques, but the driver's necks will suffer slightly.
Everybody is talking about turn number 8: it doesn't have
the fascination of the Eau Rouge but is very demanding in
it's own way. It is really nice to have new kinds of fast
corners to drive through at the max: everybody always wants
to have more. I can't wait for Friday morning so that I can
drive my laps behind the wheel of my Ferrari!"
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