Raikkonen: Fifth was probably the maximum

Another battling performance from Kimi at Monza saw the Finn clinch another top five finish, and move himself up to third place in the Drivers’ Championship in the process…

Kimi, Monza is perhaps not a circuit which suits the E20; with that in mind, can you be happy with fifth place today?

We were thinking about sixth or seventh would be realistic today so I think fifth was probably the maximum we could have achieved. We just didn’t have the pace to compete with the front runners this weekend. Our speed down the straights wasn’t so good, which made it quite tricky to defend from cars behind. When you look at it like that it’s not a bad result

Your race was anything but a quiet run, with quite a few battles throughout it seemed…

There were a few times where we were quite close with people, but like I said we weren’t really quick enough in a straight line – even with the DRS – so attacking the guys in front was always going to be hard. We pitted early and stuck with the one stop strategy, which just about worked with us holding off Michael [Schumacher] at the end. I think it was the right call.

You’re up to third in the Drivers’ Championship now; how far do you think you can go?

We lost some points to Fernando [Alonso] today which is not so good, but we still managed a decent result and it’s good to be up to third in the Championship. It’s impossible to say how this season will turn out, but it’s very close. We’ll see what happens in the next few races.