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"I came to Istanbul leading by nine points
and now I'm seven ahead, not much changed,"
says Kimi Raikkonen (above, on his way to
third place in Turkey last Sunday), "I had a
really difficult weekend, it started with a
problem and went on with another, in the end
I did not finish too badly." |
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"I like to
play golf and after the Turkish GP I had the same
feeling like having a bogey. I came to Istanbul leading
by nine points and now I'm seven ahead. Not much
changed," says Kimi Raikkonen. "I had a really difficult
weekend. It started with a problem and went on with
another. Fortunately in the end I did not finish too
badly. I wanted to fight for a win, but that's racing.
Sometimes it just goes wrong since the very beginning of
the weekend. So you concentrate to save as much as you
can, just like I did in Turkey. I can't be too
disappointed about the third spot, considering what
happened at the start.
"I'm in Switzerland now, where I was able to watch the
ice hockey match Finland-USA in Canada. After that my
result felt slightly better.
"The weekend at Istanbul started with a problem on
Friday, when something was wrong with the gear shifting
in the first session of the Free Practice. So I had to
stop and wait until the afternoon to carry on the work.
There was some rain during lunchtime, so we were not
able to get a proper picture of our car's set up and the
tyres. On Saturday morning it was not much better and we
had to go into the Qualifying without the best possible
set up.I had a lot of fuel on board so the car was
pretty good, but I made a mistake on my lap, which cost
me too much. The fourth spot on the grid really hurt.
Even my start wasn't perfect. I was almost side by side
with Heikki and I thought I might have passed him, but
then he slowed down to take the first corner and there
was no more space for me. I slowed down as much as
possible, but I touched his rear tyre with my front
wing. Meanwhile cars passed on the outside and in the
end I was sixth by the end of the first lap.The car was
not balanced perfectly, but there was no time to change
the wing. It would have cost more time compared to the
time I lost using the one I had.
"Afterwards it's
always easy to say what we could have done. But I never do
that and this case is closed.So far the only the weekend at
Barcelona was without any problems. I hope that the next one
will be at Monte Carlo. I think that we have a very
competitive car. We'll have two days of tests in France to
test the solutions for the Monaco GP. The Team is very
motivated to try to be strong on a track, where we were not
competitive last year."
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