• Malaysian Grand Prix

Raikkonen takes it easy on wets

Kimi Raikkonen ran competitively near the front throughout the race © Getty Images

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• Report:
• Alonso holds off Perez in enthralling race
  

• Race:
• Malaysian Grand Prix

• Drivers:
• Kimi Räikkönen

• Teams:
• Lotus F1

Kimi Raikkonen says that he was cautious on the intermediate and wet compound tyres having not driven on them before the Malaysian Grand Prix.

After starting in tenth place Raikkonen made solid progress throughout the race to finish in fifth place and take his tally for the season up to 16 points. Having raced closely with Mark Webber and Nico Rosberg during the race Raikkonen revealed he had actually been focussing on taking it easy to learn how the tyres react before pushing later in the race.

"I didn't have any experience on the inter tyres or the wet tyres," Raikkonen said. "We'd only done one installation lap and it was a bit odd feeling to go in the race directly with the tyres we haven't run. But I just tried to stay behind the others, stay on the circuit and then push harder and harder. In the end it took a few laps for me to pick up the speed when I changed for the drys but after that it was OK."

Despite showing the pace to challenge Red Bull during the race Raikkonen said he would hope for a clean weekend in China because he's still unsure how competitive Lotus really is.

"Hopefully we can get a quite normal race weekend next time. All the time there's something going wrong or the weather changes a lot so it would be nice to have just a normal weekend and see where we really are because right now nobody really knows where everybody is. But we seem to have a pretty strong package everywhere."

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