The start of the Italian Grand Prix was a disaster for Kimi Raikkonen as the anti-stall kicked in on his Scuderia Ferrari, dropping him from second on the grid to last on the road, but the Finnish driver recovered well to finish fifth.
Raikkonen had no explanation of why the car failed to get off the line, feeling he had worked through his procedures correctly, and bemoaned the fact it cost him the opportunity to fight for a podium finish in front of the Tifosi.
“I don’t know exactly what happened at the start,” revealed Raikkonen. “As far as I know I did everything correctly, but the car went into the anti-stall and did not move at all.
“I still don’t have the right explanation about what happened, but it’s a really bad thing that cost us a lot today. If you start from second place and after a few seconds you’re in last position it’s not easy to see the positive side of the race: we wasted a big opportunity to fight at the front.”
Despite the obvious disappointment of the start, Raikkonen felt the car had been working well all through the Monza weekend, and was happy to achieve fifth when factoring in the fact he was last heading into the first corner.
“The car has been working well all weekend and also in the race the behaviour was good,” said Raikkonen. “We made the best out of it and in the end I managed to come up fifth.
“Obviously I’m a bit disappointed, as we were hoping for a better result in our home race in front of all our fans, but if we think that after the first hundred metres we were last it was still a good result.”
Raikkonen felt the team are making progress in the right areas after admitting his surprise to be able to overtake cars that have shown strong straight-line speed so far this season at Monza.
“Overall we had a pretty good speed all weekend so in a way we have to be happy for what we have done because here we were expecting more difficulties,” insisted Raikkonen.
“Today I was positively surprised that we could get through some cars that are very fast on the straights, this shows that we are doing the right things, pushing the car in the right direction and improving in all areas.”
