• Canadian Grand Prix

Raikkonen laments starting position

Kimi Raikkonen ran a long opening stint on soft tyres but was released in traffic after his pit stop © Sutton Images

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• Report:
• Hamilton makes it seven from seven
  

• Race:
• Canadian Grand Prix

• Drivers:
• Kimi Räikkönen

• Teams:
• Lotus F1

Kimi Raikkonen believes he could have achieved more in the Canadian Grand Prix if he had started from a better grid slot.

Romain Grosjean's second place showed the pace in the Lotus in the race, and Raikkonen also made progress to finish eighth having started in 12th place. However, Raikkonen said that the DRS had not helped as much as he expected too and as a result it was difficult to make significant progress through the field even with the performance in the car.

"The car was a bit better in the race than it was in qualifying," Raikkonen said. "I seemed to get stuck behind people a few times. The DRS zone is not very long, and it's still a difficult battle if the car ahead of you is also using the DRS. We had a chance to do a bit better, but it didn't quite all come together today. We scored points again so that's always a good thing, especially this season. Qualifying yesterday wasn't perfect so obviously that left us with more work to do. If you start further forward it's easier to finish higher up the order. We'll try to achieve that in the next race."

Director of trackside operations Alan Permane said Raikkonen's drive was a good one due to the close nature of the race.

"For Kimi we used the opposite tyre strategy from Romain by starting him on the soft tyre and it worked for him to finish four places higher than he started in what was a very competitive race," Permane said. "It's two very solid drives we've had today so we're very happy to bounce back from Monaco in emphatic fashion."

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.