A few different options - Raikkonen
On his last Grand Prix appearance as a Ferrari driver, Kimi Raikkonen was in the official FIA press conference this afternoon, in the huge media facility at the brand new track. Naturally, the Finn’s future was what held the most interest for the journalists.
“My situation is not any different than a few races ago. I don’t have a contract anymore with Ferrari. It is the last race and we try to make a good result and we will see what happens in the future,” he began. “Basically I have a few different options and we will see what is the best one overall and then make my decision. Rallying is definitely one option, but I mean it is not just Formula One and rallying. There are other things I could do and we will see what happens. It’s definitely going to be Formula One, but it would have to be in the contract that I’m allowed to do rallying. It’s not going to hurt you. Any kind of driving is always going to give you some experience, so I don’t see what’s the issue. It’s been working well this year, so as long as it doesn’t disturb what you’re doing in Formula One or whatever you do, I don’t see that there’s any problem.”
Looking back at the second half of this season, Raikkonen was reasonably happy with what he and the team had achieved. “Our car is definitely not the fastest but we found a pretty good way of working with it and getting the best out of it. It has been more normal to drive than for a long time before. Once you get something that you have a good feeling with, then usually you get good results. The bigger teams or the better teams who have been faster this year should have done better; better cars should mean better results and better points overall in the last part, but they haven’t managed that and I think we did pretty well.”
With this race starting as the sun goes down, rather than running all of it at night, as in Singapore, the Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro man was asked if he expected any visibility problems. “No I don’t think there will be any problems,” he maintained. “Of course, it might look a little bit different at some point when the sun disappears but the lights, at least in Singapore, were so good that you hardly see the difference between day and night. Here, it will be quite hot anyhow, so it should be OK.”
And finally, did Kimi have any advice for his successor at the Scuderia, Fernando Alonso, with whom he was sharing the platform in the conference. “I don’t think I need to tell him anything; for sure he will find out all he needs to know. He’s been in Formula One a long time and he’s not going to have any issues there. I think he’s probably been there before and met the people already, so there’s not much to say.”
