Kimi Raikkonen secured his second podium finish of the season with third place at the Russian Grand Prix on Sunday, although he was more than half a minute behind race winner Nico Rosberg at the chequered flag.
The Scuderia Ferrari admitted he had a difficult weekend at the Sochi Autodrom, but made a good start to run second on the opening lap, before losing that position on the restart following the safety car to Valtteri Bottas, and then lost third place to Lewis Hamilton later in the stint.
Raikkonen recovered to third by running longer in the race before making his one and only pit stop, jumping ahead of Bottas, and held the position until the end.
“Overall it hasn’t been a very easy weekend, but today we tried to make the best out of it,” said Raikkonen. “I had a good start and managed to get second position but then, like last year, after the Safety Car I could not hold up the Williams behind me on the straight.
“After that I was trying to fight them back, but I lost one place to Hamilton. So we decided to run longer to gain positions and we did quite a pretty good job.
“The car was handling very well through the whole race, even if we were forced to do some fuel saving and this affected our lap times. The third place we managed today is what we were able to achieve, but is not ideal, because we want to be at the front with both cars.
“It’s a pity not to be fighting for the win, but we take this result and keep on working to put ourselves in a better position.”
