• Singapore Grand Prix

Lotus needs improvement in Japan - Raikkonen

Kimi Raikkonen: "It was a boring race. You can be quite a bit faster and you cannot get past" © Sutton Images

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• Race:
• Singapore Grand Prix

• Drivers:
• Kimi Räikkönen

• Teams:
• Lotus F1

Kimi Raikkonen says Lotus needs its updates to bring an improvement over the next few races if he is to continue to fight for the championship over the remainder of the season.

Raikkonen finished sixth at the Singapore Grand Prix and dropped 45 points off Fernando Alonso at the top of the championship as a result.

"I'm still third in the Drivers' Championship but we've got some improvements to make for the next races to be fighting with the cars in front," he explained. "Hopefully we can make a step forward in Japan and take it from there."

He said the result in Singapore was acceptable given the car's pace, but he had hoped to finish ahead of Nico Rosberg's Mercedes in fifth.

"After the result in qualifying today's race was not too bad, but I think we had a chance to do a bit better," Raikkonen added. "We weren't quick enough to be fighting for the podium but the first safety car didn't help us and maybe we could have gained an extra place without that. We were definitely faster than Michael [Schumacher] and Nico [Rosberg] but we ended up stuck behind them for most of the race which was frustrating.

"It was a boring race. You can be quite a bit faster and you cannot get past so it's not very exciting for us or the people watching."

Romain Grosjean let Raikkonen through to sixth, and while he didn't enjoy the experience, he said it would have made no sense to hold his team-mate up.

"I dropped a position to Kimi as well; he was quicker than me towards the end of the race and there was no sense in holding him up. It's never easy as a driver to let someone past - even if it is your team-mate - but we need to be intelligent in these circumstances. My target is to be as close to Kimi as I can in terms of pace and we achieved that today, so after a difficult start to the weekend I think we can be pleased with this result."

© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.