Next year we'll be back to win again - Raikkonen
Scuderia Ferrari driver Kimi Raikkonen did everything he could to help his team win the Constructors' Championship. The Finn also reflects on a very difficult season for him, but will celebrate the title with the Ferrari fans and promises that he'll hit back next season.
Kimi Raikkonen: "The season is over and this is the verdict: Ferrari won again! The last race was a mirror for the Championship. We were really strong and we gained an excellent result, but not the perfect one. The most important thing is that the Team gained the Constructors' World Title; the most realistic goal we could reach in this last race. It's a very important result for all who work for or are part of the world of Ferrari: the people from the Scuderia, our partners, and more above all Stefano Domenicali, during his first year as Team Principal. It's also a little victory for me, at the end of a difficult and complicated season. It's good to win after such a year; it shows how united the Team has been and that we have fought right until the end. My hopes ended up in smoke at Spa and Monza. From then on I tried to gain as many points as possible for the Team and I tried to understand how to improve things for the next year.
"I want to congratulate Lewis Hamilton. He gained more points than any other driver and the one who's leading the standings earns the title. It doesn't make sense to think of the "ifs" and "buts"; that only makes you feel worse and it won't change anything anyway. I'm sorry for Felipe: the situation last year was very similar and things went our way; this year it went the other way. It was a season our fans will remember for a long time. Now it's time to relax and to celebrate together with our supporters at Mugello another win of the Constructors' Title. Then we'll think about our holidays, to charge the batteries for the 2009 season. The last season didn't go as I wanted. It started very well, but then there were too many negative moments. We made some mistakes, as did our competitors. But we paid a higher price for them, we couldn't make up and I was out of the title race too early.
"But this is already part of the past. Next year we'll be back to win again. There will be new rules and many things will change. So it's difficult to say how it will look like in 2009. But I think that we'll be competitive again. Whenever there were changes Ferrari usually managed to adapt to them faster as all the others. We have to wait and see what our capacities will be and we can reach in the next Championships."
