Kimi Raikkonen made a good start and was running in second position behind his Scuderia Ferrari team-mate Sebastian Vettel up until the first round of pit stops during the Australian Grand Prix, but was forced into an early retirement when he lost power on his SF-16H and coasted into the pits with flames coming out of the airbox.
The Finnish driver knows the team still have some work to do after his retirement, but feels Ferrari are much closer to the outright pace than the qualifying performance seen on Saturday around the Albert Park circuit.
“Today we had a good first part of the race but at a certain point I lost power and had to retire,” revealed Raikkonen. “I don’t know exactly what happened, I don’t think that the problem was related to the engine because it was still running.
“It must have been something else. It’s a very unfortunate thing for the whole team.
“After the winter testing we had a rough idea that we should be pretty ok, Saturday was a funny day, with very odd conditions and circumstances, so we knew that the time difference in qualifying was not real.
“The car has been handling well, it’s fast and I had a good feeling but obviously we need to finish the race. We still have some work to do.”
