Improved Ferrari was already working well last year, says Raikkonen
Kimi Raikkonen insists that there has been no magic bullet in the way Ferrari is working this year, and that the team has simply built a better car.
Raikkonen says that the team has been operating effectively in previous years, even if that wasn’t reflected in the performance on track.
“I don’t think an awful lot has changed since the last years, personally,” he said. “Obviously there have been in the past years quite a few changes, but I said many times last year we were doing a good job and a lot of good things. But unfortunately people are looking purely at the end result, what happens on Sunday after the checkered flag. I think we’re doing a lot of the same things now.
“The guys over the winter have built a good car, and when you get results it doesn’t mean we’re suddenly doing completely different things than last year. People thought we were really bad even though we were doing good things, but obviously Mercedes were better than us, and Red Bull in the second part. In that way I wouldn’t say an awful lot has changed since last year.
“Obviously there’s always things we have to do better and fine tune stuff, but a lot of people and things are the same way. We just produced a much better car this year, and it’s obviously much easier then to produce good results. It’s a never ending thing, trying to improve all the things and get the people to work more closely, and I felt last year everyone was pushing in the right direction more and that’s been a big thing also for this year.”
Raikkonen is confident that things will get better for him personally: “We miss better results – that’s only what we miss. The last race weekend I was very happy with the things. There’s always things to improve, and that could have gone faster and better.
“But even if you happen to win the race there’s still things that could have gone better or I could have done better. It’s not often you can say I wouldn’t change anything. In many ways it’s never ending. Things can always be better.”
