- Ferrari
Raikkonen will return to form soon - Ferrari
Ferrari technical director James Allison is confident Kimi Raikkonen will start delivering much better results soon, saying the Finn has "class written all over him".
Since returning to Ferrari at the start of the year, Raikkonen has finished no higher than seventh and has struggled to get the best from the new F14 T. In China he admitted his driving style contributed to his struggles as he failed to get temperature into his tyres, but Allison, who worked with Raikkonen at Lotus, does not see his driver's problems continuing for much longer.
"Kimi is working extremely well with the team, collaborating with the engineers, helping us to drive this car forwards," Allison told Ferrari's official website. "He has class written all over him and in a very short space of time, I'm sure we will also see the results of that on the track. With Fernando [Alonso] we've seen an extraordinary level of performance, scavenging every possible point at every possible opportunity."
At the last two races Ferrari has had very varied results, with ninth- and tenth-place finishes in Bahrain and a podium in China. However, with new parts coming to the car all the time and the circuits changing from race-to-race, Allison warned against reading too much into individual results.
"Where did we see the real performance level of the car? Bahrain or China? It's a mistake to think in those terms, because it wasn't the same car at the two tracks. Between those two races, we improved the car quite substantially, so not only did the track characteristics change, so did our car.
"We are learning how to get performance out of this new set of regulations and hopefully to make this car more competitive. The key to a successful season is to keep improving your car at every race. If we can do that, bringing a meaningful amount of performance to every one of those races, we will keep seeing steps forward. And that will define what is the true F14 T, not just one single race."
© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.
