Raikkonen: Continuing to work hard

It’s Monaco, which means the Thursday programme takes place on a Wednesday, given that practice starts tomorrow instead of the usual Friday. Taking part in today’s FIA Press Conference was Kimi Raikkonen, surrounded as always at this race by French drivers. The Scuderia Ferrari driver was his usual succinct self when it came to dealing with the questions. Asked what it’s like to win the world’s most famous motor race, here in the Principality, which the Finn did in 2005, he replied, “It’s pretty okay!”

He was more talkative when it came to this weekend. “So many things can affect your result at this track and I hope we can go better here this time and score some good points, but it’s too early to say how we will be, especially as the cars are very different to last year.” The topic of how the drivers will control the 2014 cars that tend to slide more than their predecessors, in between the barriers on the street circuit does not overly worry the Ferrari man: “If you car is good, that won’t matter too much, as you know how it behaves,” he said.

“It’s true there’s a bit less grip and the cars can be hard to handle, but let’s see what happens in FP1.” In more general terms, Kimi feels progress has been made with the development of the F14 T. “At the last race we had some problems, but the car was a bit better in Spain, even if sixth and seventh place is not at all where we want to be. We are improving little by little, as it is not a simple fix, but we are continuing to work hard.”