Räikkönen feels P2 the best result possible in Bahrain

Four races, three podiums and some classy drives for the Iceman so far in 2013. As always though, he’s wanting more…

After a difficult day yesterday, are you satisfied with today’s result?

You’re never really happy if you don’t win, but I suppose second place is as close as you can get. We could maybe have been a few places higher in in qualifying which would have made things easier, but I drove to the maximum and luckily we found the pace in the car that was missing yesterday. We didn’t have the speed to challenge Sebastian [Vettel] today, but we did have the pace to get both cars on the podium so I’m happy for the team.

After a tough start, did you believe this result was on the cards?

I got off the line ok but then got a bit caught in the traffic so it wasn’t an easy start for sure. After the first stop I thought we had a good chance to make the podium, but we were on a different strategy to most of the others so it was difficult to tell where we were. In the end it worked out pretty well.

There seemed to be a bit of contention over your first stop…

We stopped pretty early the first time and you don’t want to run a set of tyres too long as you then have to look after them a bit more and they start to get more tricky with every lap. It was a bit of a change from our initial plan but that’s pretty normal and I wasn’t worried; our tyre wear was never a problem and they still felt fine at the end.

Yourself and the team currently occupy P2 in both Championships; are you pleased with how things are going?

For sure it’s an ok start and we’re in a better position that this time last year, but there’s a long season ahead and it’s too early to say if we can fight for the Championship right to the end. It’s going to be hard to catch Sebastian [Vettel] if he keeps taking good results so we need to start taking more points from him, but you never know what can happen. We’ll keep pushing to improve the car and see where we end up.