- German GP - Race
Raikkonen blames contact damage for poor result
Kimi Raikkonen is confident he would have scored points at the German Grand Prix had it not been for the damage to his front wing following with Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel.
Raikkonen finished 11th but had to nurse his Ferrari for 54 laps after sustaining front wing damage while going wheel-to-wheel with Hamilton at the hairpin. Two laps later he was sandwiched between Sebastian Vettel and team-mate Fernando Alonso at the same corner and he said the damage sustained in both accidents reduced front downforce and increased tyre degradation.
"I got twice hit and ended up in a bit between two cars," he said. "It damaged my front wing and my end plate came off, so that didn't help and I grained the front left. The tyres were okay apart from the front left always. We could have run as long as we wanted on the super-soft but we lost performance with the damage on the car.
"Without the damage we definitely should have scored points and been stronger. We lost a lot of downforce with the damage so it was not easy and things are not going to plan. Something always goes wrong. That's what keeps happening and hopefully it will stop at some point.
"At least the car felt better here and more to my liking. We had a bad run in Q2 yesterday and when I was in the race the car felt good on new tyres but the front left just didn't last. The good thing is it feels more like it should and even if the results are not where they should be it is a positive thing."
Raikkonen said the two incidents were similar but put more blame with Vettel than Hamilton.
"When I'm in the middle I cannot go anywhere and unfortunately I ended up squeezed a little bit. It wasn't much, but enough to damage the front wing. I couldn't go more left because there was a car and both times it was more or less exactly the same thing. Maybe a bit more with Vettel, but what can I do?
"I think the first one, Hamilton moved a little bit and locked a wheel with his left front and that just pushes you left. There's not much he could do. With Vettel - I haven't seen these things [on TV] - but it felt like he tried to come a bit left and did not notice that there was one car next to me [Alonso]. Obviously we got very close, but it's just one of those things."
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