Kimi Raikkonen felt it was a ‘OK’ result in Bahrain on Sunday with second place after a slow getaway had cost him a number of positions at the start.
The Scuderia Ferrari driver dropped a number of places heading into turn one, but made some good overtaking manoeuvres during the race to move up the order, but ultimately could not recover significantly to make a challenge to race leader Nico Rosberg.
Raikkonen also bemoaned team-mate Sebastian Vettel’s retirement, feeling the team need both cars on track to make a true challenge to the Mercedes team.
“The start was not ideal, but luckily we did not lose too many places in the first lap,” said Raikkonen. “After that I tried to recover, and was able to overtake some cars and make the best out of it.
“We managed to do good pit-stops with the right tyre choices and the speed was quite good, too. In the end we were catching up a bit on the Mercedes in front, but I never got close enough to try and pass Nico.
“Considering what happened in the first lap it’s a pretty ok result, it’s not what we want but we keep working and improving things. We are going in the right direction, but obviously it’s not ideal for the team to have only one car finishing the race.
“In this sport we always push to the limits and sometimes things can go wrong, this is not what we want but it’s part of racing. We know that the car is pretty good but we have certain things to improve and still some work to be done.”
