Q&A From Valencia, Robertson & Whitmarsh On Kimi

From Autosport.com & FerrariWorld.com

Q. We saw you walking around the track this morning. What is your first impression?

Kimi Raikkonen: "It looks pretty nice. It’s very
wide and the surface looks very smooth. It looks pretty fun, so we will
see tomorrow. It looks nice when you walk it, but it is a different
story when you go 300km/h around it. But I expect to have good fun when
we drive around."

Q. How difficult is it to learn a new track?

KR: "It takes a few laps when you know where to go,
but you learn and learn all the time small things and small lines. But
I would not say it is too hard."

Q. Are there any special things here, like the bridge where there is a small gap?

KR: "There are a few bumps because I guess they
need to turn the bridge sometimes. That is the only place where I found
any bumps on the circuit, and one of them is in the middle of the
corner. So, that might affect things a bit. But apart from that the
circuit looks very smooth and very well done. We will see tomorrow how
good it is in the end, but I expect to have quite good fun."

Q. It has been eight races since you last won in F1. Do you feel satisfied with how the season has gone?

KR: "Definitely we would rather have won more
races, we had some chances but in the end we couldn’t win them. But we
are still in a good position for the championship, although the season
could have been much better. It could also have been much worse.

"Overall, I am happy where we are right now. Lately, the races have
not been exactly what I was expecting, so hopefully we will get some
good races now and get back where we should be. The biggest issue is
getting stuck behind people after having a bad qualifying, so if we can
sort out that then we should be fine. We just need to work on some
things and hopefully we will get back to winning some races."

Q. What are you confident about for the rest of the season, and what worries you?

KR: "There are some circuits coming that I enjoy.
Hopefully we can get things sorted out so that we can really fight for
wins. We have the good speed, as long as we can use it in qualifying,
in the race we should be fine.

"I don’t really worry about anything, there are many races to go. It
is easy to lose points, but also easy to win. We will try to do the
best every weekend and hopefully after a few races we are still in a
good position and then we can try and win the championship."

Q. From now on every race is crucial for the championship. Do you like the pressure that this brings?

KR: "More or less there is pressure every race, so
it doesn’t really change anything. When it gets later in the season,
when you have the chance to win the championship, it is more crucial
not to make any mistakes but that is normal all the time. Like I said,
we will do the best we can every race and then see where we end up."

Q. Have you been able to go through the qualifying issues
you have had recently and are you confident you can get it fixed for
this weekend?

KR: "We will try at least. At the last race I ran
off the circuit, as the handling was not what we expected, I just ran
wide. It is always easy to say that I have fixed this or that, but we
should be fine.

"We know when we get everything as we want that we have the speed,
but it hasn’t been easy. It is a similar situation to last year so it’s
not the first time to be in this position. Hopefully, we can fix it now
and have better qualifying and better races after that."

Q. Qualifying is crucial at Monaco. How crucial will it be here?

KR: "Every race is crucial, it’s not just Monaco.
The last race, if you look, you could not get past anybody if they did
not make a mistake, so, it is the same here. The circuit is very wide
and there are some long straights, so here there are some better
overtaking chances than in Hungary.

"But still, if you are not in front then you are going to lose many
seconds stuck behind people, even if you get past them in the end. It
is always crucial to be at the front."

Q. Why do you think Felipe Massa is getting more out of the
car than you in qualifying? What are the specific problems you’ve been
having?

KR: "There is no one issue. Sometimes it goes
right, sometimes not. At the last race I ran off the circuit, which
doesn’t help. But, like I said, we haven’t been exactly happy with the
handling and it easily makes it look worse than it is.

"The problem is that it is very close between everybody now and if
you are one tenth slower you lose three places. We would have fixed it
if we knew what to do, but I think we will find a solution. We just
need to put more effort in and try to get it right."

"Q. Do you think the summer break was a help for you, allowing you to recharge a bit?

KR: "I really don’t know. We will see tomorrow and
over the weekend, but I enjoyed it, I had a good time. We haven’t had
good races lately, for many different reasons, but we know we have the
speed if we get things right so I’m not too worried about it. The main
thing, like I said before, is the qualifying. After that, we have good
speed when we get it right."

Q. What did you do during the break?

KR: "I was mainly home, just doing different stuff, seeing my friends and family. And just enjoying it. I’ve been watching a lot of the Olympics, enjoying whatever sport was
on, and for me the highlights have been the sprint races, the one
hundred and two hundred metres especially."

Q. Can you tell us what the car is or isn’t doing that you want it to do in qualifying?

KR: "Well, what can I say? I haven’t been fast
enough, that is the first point. Without going off in the last
qualifying we could easily have been in third place, so it is the small
things that when it goes wrong you lose a lot of time, and it looks
much worse than it is.

"It can be just a small issue and it makes you go off the circuit
and run wide, and you lose a lot of time. Since we changed to these
tyres, even last year I wasn’t exactly happy in qualifying, even though
in race conditions we are much happier with the car.

"It is not a new issue, sometimes we get it right and sometimes we
don’t. More often, unfortunately, we don’t get it right. So we will
definitely try to find a halfway solution in qualifying, to have maybe
a car that is not exactly what we want, but is maybe a bit easier to
drive and doesn’t have the issues that we don’t want.

"But we are still looking for it and it depends a lot on the
circuits. At some circuits it is easier to get it right, at some it’s
very difficult. Hopefully we have found some halfway solution where we
are fast but can still be happy with."

Q. Do you feel you are back on form here? Do you think you
can bully Lewis a bit here, because he has got a lead and he needs to
protect it?

KR: "I don’t see any point to do anything silly. We
are as hard as we can be, we try to overtake when we have a chance. But
it is not so easy to get in the position always. I don’t see any point
to be harder to any one of them, we are hard to anybody and we try to
win.

"The difference is only five points, but every time we are behind
him we are going to lose more points so definitely we will try to be in
front of the people who are ahead of us. I don’t think I am driving
better than before, I don’t think I drove badly before, we just could
not get it right, so we’ll see what we can do this weekend and go from
there."

Kimi seemed like he was in a great mood today, seeing from the pictures and this interview. Smiling a lot, I guess he’s really excited about racing at this new cool track. It just looks awesome. And he seems pretty honest about his qualifying ‘issues’ so it can’t be all that bad after Hungary. Keep flying!

P.S – Autosport.com’s Weekly Journal written by Adam Cooper speaks with Martin Whitmarsh and Kimi’s manager Steve Robertson. It’s definately a good read and worth the time so if you’re registered at the KRS forum, go and check it out now. If not, please do join our forum as you’re missing out! Here’s a snippet:

… It’s easy to suggest that Kimi has somehow lost the plot, but that
would be a little short sighted. Just a few weeks ago in France,
Raikkonen started from pole and left his teammate Felipe Massa in his
wake before an exhaust failure slowed him. In the Silverstone rain, he
was catching Hamilton until his team scr*wed up their tyre strategy.
And few noticed during the low-key outing in Hungary that he actually
set fastest lap, having spent the first two-thirds of the race stuck
behind Fernando Alonso.

And let’s not forget that in Canada, Ferrari got him out of the
pits in front of Hamilton, and we’ll never know how that race would
have unfolded had he not been hit by the wayward McLaren On the other
hand, Monaco was not exactly great – a nudge with a barrier followed by
a spectacular spin into the back of the unfortunate Adrian Sutil. And
while he didn’t fare quiet as badly as the hapless Felipe Massa, he
made hard work of Silverstone after that botched tyre choice.

However, the bottom line is that despite his roller-coaster ride,
Kimi has still been quietly stashing away the points – a fourth here
and a sixth there – and if his luck changes over these next seven
races, he could yet win that second title.

"I think if you look at all the drivers, they’ve all had their ups
and downs," says Kimi’s co-manager Steve Robertson. "If one of the top
four drivers had a bad day last year, they would be fourth on the grid
still. F1 is so close now that if you have a bad day, even one of the
top boys can be seventh or eighth on the grid, if they don’t nail the
set-up and get everything perfect. It’s closer than it’s ever been
before."

It would be McLaren or Ferrari last year, depending on which type
of circuit we went to. Clearly that’s not the case this year, and you
can have a top driver finishing sixth or seventh in a weekend."

Robertson agrees that you need to take a closer look at Kimi’s performances to truly judge his form.

"He hasn’t won for quite some time. But the last two races aside,
if you look at the three races before that, he was very unlucky. At
Silverstone, OK it was a wrong call for the tyres, but for the six laps
prior to the pit stop he caught Lewis up at a second a lap. McLaren had
only one call to make because they couldn’t keep Lewis on the same
tyres anyway, as Kimi was much quicker….

… So is Kimi doing a bit of soul searching?

"I’m sure he’s concerned about the last two races, that would only be
natural. But as I’ve always said before, he won’t dwell on it. He
realises that things have to change, and he’ll do his best with the
team to change the things that are obviously not suiting his driving
style. But Kimi’s never the sort of person not to sleep at night
because of it."

Indeed, having won from so far behind last year, Kimi knows that
there is no need to panic just yet. Rivals McLaren know him well, and
the team certainly haven’t discounted him.

"By observation from the outside, Kimi has not had a
straightforward season," says Martin Whitmarsh. "He’s a great
competitive driver, a great racing driver. In Hungary everyone was
starting to write him off. There was some fortune involved in his third
place, a puncture for Lewis and an engine failure for Felipe, but
nonetheless that’s what these great racing drivers have – a habit of
being there when others suffer misfortunes, banging the points in." …