Today in an interview with ESPN F1, Ferrari driver Kimi Raikkonen is not getting carried away by his sixth position in Hungary but thinks the race is proof he is turning a corner after his difficult first half of the 2014 season.
Raikkonen made up for a huge error of judgement from Ferrari in qualifying, where he stayed in the garage at the end of Q1 and dropped out of the session to record his best result of the season so far.
In his interview with ESPN F1 today, Raikkonen has stated that despite the result, he does not think all of his problems are behind him just yet but he welcomes the fact he was competitive at the Hungaroring. Raikkonen said the following:-
‘It’s been a hard first part of the year. When you can push and fight against people rather than just defend and fall backwards, it shows that we are doing something right and getting at least some light at the end of the tunnel. It’s a good thing but the big picture hasn’t changed from one result.
‘We still have issues where we have to improve – mechanical grip, downforce, power. Here and Monaco seem to be a bit better for us but there is still a long way until we can say we are happy. The result is a bit better for me, and the team got a few more points, but the team hasn’t suddenly made a massive change.’
There is no question that the first part of the season has not gone the way Ferrari and Raikkonen expected either. As Raikkonen has pointed out, Hungary saw him achieve his best result of the season so far but he is realistic that this result has showed that they are moving in the right direction and that they are finally seeing that things are slowly starting to change for them.
Even though they are not happy with what they have managed to achieve this season, all they can do is try and push to develop the car as much as they can in order to improve their performance. Slowly but surely, Raikkonen’s performances have managed to improve as he rightly states in his interview today but they have a lot of work in do in order to close the gap to their rivals.
Further on in his interview, Raikkonen thinks the results team-mate Fernando Alonso has achieved this year proves Ferrari has a good basic package but he thinks there are still lots of little areas of improvement that can be made ahead of next season. Raikkonen added the following:-
‘It’s not a disaster, that’s for sure, otherwise there would not be the results the team has achieved so far. We know the areas where we have to work and it’s a bit everywhere. We are not really bad anywhere but we are not fantastic anywhere.
‘It’s a reliable car, some places work better and some conditions work better but we have a lot of places that we know if we improve we can improve the whole thing. Things are not easy to change or improve in Formula One. You can pinpoint the issue you have but it’s very tricky to suddenly come up with a fix otherwise it would be easy and nobody would have any issues.’
Even though Raikkonen has not been able to extract pace and performance from the car unlike Alonso, it is clear that there is something in the car that Alonso is able to extract in order to give Ferrari the results that they have achieved so far this season. I do firmly believe that Raikkonen is struggling with certain aspects of the car and if he can find the solution to this, we will see his results improve massively.
As Raikkonen states, it is clear that Ferrari have a reliable car that is under Alonso currently able to bring it home and achieve the best results that he possibly can. But I would agree with Raikkonen and I feel Ferrari have a lot of work ahead of them for the remainder of the season as they try and close the gap to their rivals while also turning their attentions to the 2015 car alongside this.
For the remainder of the 2014 season, I would have to agree with Raikkonen that even though there appears to be some slow improvement that Ferrari have made over the past few races that has allowed him and also Alonso to achieve results that they thought would be hard to get.
It is clear that their objective for the remainder of the season is pinpoint the issues where they are struggling and ensure that they do everything possible to improve their performance and pace of the F14 T. I do believe that Ferrari will not close the gap to their rivals such as Mercedes and Red Bull this year, but they have a fight on their hands with Williams for third in the Constructors and that is a fight that Ferrari must win and should boost them into making sure that they start the 2015 season learning their lessons from this year and starting the 2015 season as competitive as they can be.
But will Ferrari be able to fend off Williams for third in the Constructors Championship this season? Only time will tell.
