Lotus driver Kimi Raikkonen rues poor race strategy in Silverstone – Formula 1 news
Lotus driver Kimi Raikkonen has said that he failed to secure a podium finish in the 2013 British Grand Prix because of his team’s poor race strategy.
Raikkonen struggled during the qualifying at Silverstone circuit and could only secure 8th grid position for the race. Despite showing an incredible pace on the race day, he could not secure a podium finish because the Enstone based team called for pit under
the safety car quite late.
The Finnish driver expressed big disappointment over his team’s decision regarding the pit stop and said that he could have easily secured second podium finish otherwise. Although, he managed to secure fifth place finish in the race, he was quite angry with
his team over the poor race strategy.
“I don't understand how we can get it so wrong,” Raikkonen said. “I asked the team, they said no and we had more than half a lap to make the right call. I think we gave up second place today and I think it's pretty simple. We had an easy P2 … it was absolutely
the wrong call. It's disappointing but not my fault this time.”
In addition, he showed support for the Pirelli compound tyres which were largely criticised by some other drivers which mainly include Lewis Hamilton of Mercedes and Felipe Massa of Ferrari.
“That's part of the game, it's probably something like a sharp edge on a kerb or something and it doesn't matter which kind of tyres you have when you have that kind of thing on circuit it will break,” he added.
Presently, he is standing at third place in the drivers’ championship with 98 points. Furthermore, he is ahead of Hamilton and behind his major rival, Fernando Alonso of Ferrari who successfully closed the gap to the leading driver, Sebastian Vettel of Red
Bull Racing by 15 points after securing an amazing third podium finish in the last race.
The 2007 world champion took a great start to this season and scored an incredible win in the Australian GP. Moreover, he has secured three podium finishes in the season until now. Let’s see how he performs in the approaching race.
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