Kimi Raikkonen was left happy with his performance in the United States Grand Prix, hailing his Scuderia Ferrari team for providing a “nice car to drive” en route to third place.
The Finnish driver qualified fifth at Austin, briefly dropping behind Sahara Force India‘s Esteban Ocon in the opening laps before re-passing the Frenchman.
Feeling confident in the car, Raikkonen was able to rise to third place to finish five seconds adrift of Ferrari team-mate Sebastian Vettel, and suggested post-race that the team was capable of more.
“My car worked very well through the whole race,” said Raikkonen. “I was very pleased, it was so good and nice to drive.
“I felt we had a lot of speed and the tires lasted very well until the end. I’m sure that if we had started from the qualifying position we deserved, our pace would have been enough to get us a much better result.
“We kept gaining ground whenever I could push, which was a very good feeling. In the last part of the race I could have gone a lot faster, but I also had to manage fuel, so I slowed down my pace and this was a limiting factor.
“The final result could have been better, but we have two cars on the podium, so we cannot be too disappointed.”
Raikkonen was controversially overtaken by Max Verstappen on the final lap of the race, before the Dutchman was relegated to fourth after the race having been found guilty of exceeding track limits when passing the Ferrari driver.
However, Raikkonen refused to be drawn on the incident, believing that he was unable to assess the events from his position.
“The incident involving Verstappen, I can’t comment, because I haven’t seen what happened from where I was.”
