Just like driving in daytime - Raikkonen
Kimi Raikkonen took part in the FIA press conference this evening, as darkness fell on the Singapore track, and the first question related to driving at night. In his usual laid-back way, the Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro driver didn’t think it was a problem.
“It’s fine driving under floodlights at night, not much different to any other circuit and it’s just like driving in daytime really,” he said. “And if you feel it’s too bright, you can always fit a dark visor!”
Even though Raikkonen’s race here last year ended in a crash, the Finn is enthusiastic about the venue. “I don’t remember all the corners, because there are so many of them, which makes it interesting. It’s a nice track, very challenging, quite bumpy but I heard they fixed that problem, which means it will be very nice to drive here again if the solution works.”
With a string of four consecutive podium finishes in the last four races, Kimi has been the most consistent driver in recent races, but as usual, he was not keen to make any predictions regarding his chances this Sunday. “I think it’s the same story as every race, in that we have to wait until free practice to see what happens. >From then on we can make our plan and follow it for the rest of the weekend. If we do that well, we can have a good chance to be high up in the top five.Circuits like Monaco and Valencia have been pretty okay for us, so maybe this is more like them. But everybody seems to go forward and we have had no new parts since Hungary. All we have is small ones, but nothing major, but still we have been able to have good results, so hopefully it is the same here. Let’s wait and see for tomorrow and then we will have a much better idea.”
Sadly, the main talking point which has made the F1 headlines recently concerns the Renault affair, which dates back to Nelson Piquet’s accident at this Grand Prix last year. “Every sport has things like this and if anyone has lost faith in F1, I think it probably happened before this incident,” said Kimi. “These things happen in all walks of life including sport. I hope we can forget all this and get back to racing.” And Raikkonen was critical of the idea of a driver deliberately crashing. “Well, accidents can always happen, but I don’t think there are many people who want to have accidents on purpose. It’s a dangerous sport, anything can go wrong, even at slow speeds and you can get badly hurt but that’s the risk we take.”
