Raikkonen: a new beginning

Last year, Kimi Raikkonen won this Grand Prix, but with a different team and this weekend marks his return to the circuit where he also won on his debut for the Scuderia in 2007.

“A new beginning of a season and we’ll just have to see how it goes,” is how the Finn summed it up when meeting the media today. “I’m with a new team but I have been here before which definitely makes life easier.”

Familiarity with the track and the team doesn’t mean the man from Espoo has a handle on how this weekend might go.

“Every season there are question marks and how many depends on how the testing has gone,” he affirmed. “This year, with quite a lot of rule changes it’s a bit harder to know where we are and what’s going to happen, even if everyone has a rough idea of where we are going to be. We will have to wait until after the first few races to get a clearer picture. But there is no point guessing where we are now. Some teams have looked a bit faster than us in testing, but here we are in a different place, a very different track to Bahrain and different things can happen. Obviously I want to win and hopefully we can be up there and fight for the championship. The weather could be a bit tricky this weekend and with the new rules there could be a different scenario to the days when we raced with more fuel.”

With his usual matter of fact view of life, winning twice in Albert Park doesn’t endear the track to Kimi.

“I don’t think this circuit is particularly special, although it’s a nice place for everybody to come,” he says. “As it’s the first race of the season, usually something happens and it makes for exciting racing, but just because I won here last year, it doesn’t mean this year will be just as good. You want to score as many points as you can. Hopefully we won’t have too many issues and can have a clean weekend and then we can see where we end up compared to the others.”

As for Kimi’s approach to the weekend, it’s straightforward: “there are a lot of areas where we still need to improve all the time and I hope we will be happy with the car right from the start of tomorrow’s practice.”