- Ferrari
Raikkonen explains 2014 struggle
Kimi Raikkonen says he has sacrificed championship points this year in the pursuit of a car that suits his driving style, but admits he has not made as much progress with the Ferrari as he would like.
Since his return to Ferrari at the beginning of the year, Raikkonen has struggled to adapt to the handling characteristics of this year's car. Aside from the F14 T's lack of competitiveness, Raikkonen's main gripe has been the car's poor front-end grip, which he has tried to remedy on several occasions but without much success.
"We have tried many things this year in the races and it hasn't worked out," he said. "Probably it has cost us some points, but I wanted to try things and find out. It's been such a difficult year that I'd rather try things and if it doesn't work I pay the price for it and that's fine.
"Next year will be different because you have a new car and it's a different story. I'm sure it will be a better car, a better package, and what we have learned from here we can improve for sure."
Since Pirelli changed its tyre construction for safety reasons midway through last season, Raikkonen said he has struggled to get the bite from the front tyres he needs for his driving style.
"It's a combination of many things. Last year we had a pretty good front tyre at the beginning of the year and then we changed to one not so good. I wasn't too happy about it and I preferred the different tyres we had at the beginning of last year. It's a combination of many things and sometimes you have a limitation of what you can do and we got stuck in an area that was hard to get it working."
Raikkonen said his driving style means he relies on front-end grip to carry as much speed as possible through the corner.
"Since the go-karts, if it doesn't turn and the front doesn't bite I've never liked it. My driving style is more about trying to carry the speed into the corners and keep it up in the mid-corner. It's the way I'm used to doing thing but obviously it changes every year and with every car, but I still think it's the fastest way and when you get the car working for you as you want the fastest maximum speed - for me at least - can be found that way.
"It's something that's lacking from the car right now and if you cannot put the car where you want and brake where you want because of locking or sliding the front then it becomes a guessing game about where you are going to be. And if you miss a little bit the corner you are going to miss a lot of speed on the next straight. It sounds like a small thing, but around one lap when you keep guessing every corner it creates quite a big deficit. A few races it has been pretty okay and then most races it has been like that where you fight every corner and then the time difference is quite big."
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