Raikkonen: A better understanding of the car

In the Ferrari hospitality unit perched above the paddock lagoon, Kimi Raikkonen had his first meeting of the Chinese GP weekend with the world’s media. What did he feel about the departure of Domenicali is what the press wanted to know.

“Everyone was a bit surprised but it was Stefano’s own decision,” commented the Finn. “If that’s how he felt then that’s fair enough and life goes on. Personally, I find it sad as he is a great guy and I worked with him for many years. But that’s how it goes and I’m sure the team can handle the current situation.”

Kimi then mentioned that he’d met the new man, Marco Mattiacci before, “but I don’t really know him,” he added. “He will find a great team of people around him here, who will help him to settle in quickly. I don’t foresee any problems and I am sure he will do a very good job for us. He will have everything he needs to push us forward. But nothing will change immediately as there are no miracles and we know where we are at the moment. We know in which areas we must improve but it will not happen overnight.”

Kimi did see signs of progress over recent weeks.

“At the last race, the overall feeling I had from the car had improved and the problem in Bahrain was just that we were a bit slow,” he maintained. “I expect that already here this weekend we will have improvements on some small things. It’s difficult to say when we will be at the level we want, but with new rules there is always the possibility of suddenly finding a big improvement, but sometimes progress can be slow. It’s important that we now have a better understanding of the car after the first races and we have improved a lot since Melbourne, even if it’s hard to see that because others have also progressed. Bahrain was one of the most difficult races for us and hopefully here it will be a bit better.”