Kimi’s Official Column: Spanish Preview, News

kimiraikkonen.com

Maximum attack.

I am always looking forward to the next race. This time I can hardly wait. We have had a long break and a very promising test last week. Now we go to Barcelona better prepared, and with a better feeling than we did to the previous races. Finally we can attack flat out. With the Maximum Attack like my friend Markku Alen used to say.

We have improved a lot. The new parts is working well and the car is more suited to my driving style. So, I am more optimistic about the race.

Of course you never know how competitive you are compared to the other teams until Sunday afternoon. But looking at the testing times, Ferrari will be competitive.

As I said before, we need to improve the qualifying pace. It has been a problem for me to be able to get the most of the car out on one lap, because I never got the car 100% to my liking. But now I am happy with the improvements we have made in the last test.

It is very difficult to pass other cars on the track, so starting at the front makes things much easier to win. To qualify on the front row and to win the race, you need very good aerodynamics and a well balanced car. The whole package has to work well. After the tests, I felt that the team has done a brilliant job on all areas.

I won the Spanish Grand Prix in 2005, but that does not make any difference for this year. It was a nice experience, but this time you have to meet the new challenges. The new chicane makes the circuit a bit slower, but it is still the same for everybody. If the car was good on the old circuit layout, then it will still be good with the new chicane. Barcelona is still a demanding circuit with high requirements from the car and the driver.

We had a good test in Barcelona earlier this year in February, but now with the new parts on the car everything worked much better. The car responds in the way I want it to. Now, setting up the car gives me a better feeling, while it reacts responsively and I feel very confident to start the weekend.

Simply said, it is better to drive.

The whole team is working highly motivated and the feeling inside is great. But like always in racing, you can never promise success beforehand. During testing, nobody knows exactly what the other teams are doing, we have to wait until Saturday to find out our speed compared to the competitors. After the race, we will know if it was enough.

Of course we go to win in Spain. We will do our very best. The championship is very tight this year so it is very important to always score good points.

Now the best time of the year is about to begin. The summer is coming and we race back into Europe. Also, the most important games of ice hockey are played right now. As you probably know, I am a big fan of ice hockey.

I have been watching the ice hockey world championshp tournament in Moscow as well as the games of my friend Teemu Selanne of The Mighty Ducks of Anaheim in the Stanley Cup playoffs in the NHL. Both have been winning. That gives me an even better feeling.

During the break, I have been chilling out with my friends and family, trained some ice hockey and prepared for the coming golf season also. The swing is getting there.

Maximum Attack like this? lol

GP.com: How can Ferrari pull away from the opposition?

Ferrari dominated last week’s Barcelona testing during which Felipe
Massa was quoted, saying that the developement of the F2007 was "at
least half a second faster than before". This is bad news for the
opposition and there have been suggestions that when practice begins in
Spain later this week we may see Ferrari as much as a second ahead of
everyone. And this has been achieved even with Ferrari having
redesigned the floor of its cars to withstand the FIA’s flexibility
tests.

The opposition has been working on a variety of new aerodynamic
devices, notably Honda’s "Dumbo" nose wings and McLaren’s new
"bi-plane" front wing. These may make a difference but no-one seems
very confident that they can keep up with Ferrari.

The question being asked is how Ferrari has managed to pull off
such an improvement, which is huge in modern F1 terms. The answer,
however, seems to be that the team started the year with a package that
was deliberately not as efficient as it could be – because the team
wanted to see how the new tyres behaved.

When the F2007 was launched Ferrari was very careful to make sure
that there were few photographs of the rear of the car. This may have
been because the team did not want expert eyes to figure out that the
rear end was not really changed from last year. The only remarks made
were that the rear suspension was similar to that of the 248 and that
there was still development ongoing.

"This year the tyres were not known to us until very late in the
process as Bridgestone had a new specification of tyre to supply the
whole field and did not want to give any team an advantage by letting
them know the specification any earlier," said chief designer Nick
Tombazis at the time. "We had to leave a bit more margin in some areas
of the F2007’s adjustability in order to be able to adapt to that."

After three races the tyres are now much better understood and with
the evolution in the rear suspension the designers have been able to
alter the rear of the car with a reshaped engine cover, a revision of
the cooling system and therefore smaller sidepods.

Thus, it may be that Ferrari’s impressive leap forward is because
the team was not starting from where its rivals thought it was.