Kimi Räikkönen suffered his second retirement in five races in 2018 as the Finn suffered a technical problem whilst running inside the top four on lap twenty-five of the Spanish Grand Prix on Sunday.
The Scuderia Ferrari driver felt he was in a good position for a good haul of points and potentially another podium finish after managing his tyres ahead of his one planned pit stop, but the Finn failed to get as far as that as he crawled around the track with what appeared to be an engine related issue, bringing the SF71-H into the pits and into retirement at the end of the lap.
“My race was going pretty ok today, I was in a decent position and the speed was good,” said Räikkönen. “I was running smoothly and saving the tyres.
“Everything could have been alright, but unfortunately it did not happen. At one point I started losing power; I managed to drive around but obviously not at full speed anymore, so I drove back to the garage.
“We don’t know more than that about the issue we had, we need to take the car back to the factory and check what happened.”
Räikkönen admitted it was far from the best result in terms of the championship as he slipped even further behind the leading trio, but he said there was nothing anyone within the team could have done any differently to change what happened.
“Looking at the Championship, this result is far from ideal, and I’m pretty disappointed,” said the Finn. “There is nothing we could have done differently today, but we need to try and keep pushing.”
