Kimi’s Column: Pre – Turkish GP

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Keep on Fighting

For a change, it was nice to relax with my best friends at home in Finland. We had some days off and the weather was brilliant.

There was no testing after Barcelona. I bet all the top teams have done their homework very carefully to beat us in Turkey. But there is no reason to worry about that. I believe Ferrari will be fast there, too.

If you look at the circuits we’ve raced on this season, Istanbul is demanding in a similar way like Malaysia and Bahrain. Well, Ferrari won both of those and it gives us a good feeling that we should again be very competitive.

Obviously Spain was a perfect weekend for me and the team, now we want to make sure we keep our position. At least we will push very hard – which our competitors will also do to catch us.

In Barcelona, we got my first pole of the season. It helped a lot. It seems it is a must to get pole in Istanbul too. Last year I made a mistake in Q3 and it really hurt. It seems that to win at Turkey, you have to start from pole – like in Barcelona.

I really like Istanbul. It is the best of these new circuits. There are downhill and uphill corners and some are very challenging. You really get a great feeling especially after getting turn eight exactly right.

We drive anti-clockwise there. It is for the first time this year that we drive at this kind of circuit, and for sure it gives a tough time on the neck and muscles.

I’ve had two wins and a second place finish after the first four races and I’m leading the championship by 9 points. I’m very happy how things have gone so far. That said, things can change very quickly in F1 so the team needs to keep pushing 100% to stay infront of our main competitors.

I won’t change anything in my approach. It’s far too early in the season to think about anything else other than taking the maximum amount of points from every Grand Prix.

I want to win as many races as possible. I must confess that I really like this part of the season. We just go for it everytime. Only winning matters.

We are leading the championship but it does not count if we are not able to keep our position, that’s when it really means something. They best way to hang onto first is to keep the others behind in the race.

Our target is to get the 1-2 result again. We will fight – as hard as the Finnish team does in the ice hockey world championships in Canada.

Again, it’s nice that Heikki is well. The safety issues of these racing cars seems to be handled very well. That is very good for the sport.

Indeed it is! Kimi’s last big smash was during the Italian GP practise session last year which was around 120mph and the impact was pretty hard on his neck despite wearing the mandatory HANS (Head and Neck Support) system – it caused a problem for him throughout the weekend. But everything’s going so well at the moment for Kimi, let’s pray that he doesn’t suffer a set back like that again.

He’s flying high and we hope to give him something more to smile about. In the wait of the Turkish Grand Prix there were some odd discussions about Kimi’s new skin head haircut, and members from the Official Kimi Raikkonen forum have been planning a bizarre stunt that would be continued in many races throughout the year, the first being at Istanbul, one at the Hungarian Grand Prix and though it’s not confirmed yet, I’ll be doing it at the British Grand Prix. It’s going to be an extraordinary sign but I won’t say too much, we’ll have to wait and see as Kimi says!