Kimi's Column - The street pain

by - 8/31/2008 07:49:00 p.m.

Life would be much easier if you could always win. But sometimes it doesn't seem to go your way - whatever you try.

That's what happened to me in the last couple of races and it's not so nice. But it's not over yet. I'll keep fighting to get the results I want to achieve. One third of the season is still left and it's enough to fight back.

Obviously I would have never expected that all these street circuit races would so badly hurt our campaign to win the world championship again.

We had the first DNF in Melbourne, however we gained one point still. Then we hit that bump in Monaco and crashed into another car. In Montreal we had a good race pace but had to retire after the collision in the pit exit. This weekend we lost the engine in Valencia.

I went to the European Grand Prix with a good feeling. It's always great to have a race in a new place. Friday practise was good, I had a good feeling in the car. But Saturday was a little bit cooler and we struggled again in qualifying. We should have been more aggressive.

Obviously there has been a lot of talk about my qualifying problems. But in Hungary I just went wide in my final lap in Q3. Without that we would have easily been third. Then after that we got fourth place in Valencia, and after that I already knew the race was going to be difficult.

At the start you would need almost a miracle to get to the top from fourth place on the grid or further behind. We started from the worse side. Heikki had better grip and passed us. After that it was me against him for fourth place.

When you get stuck behind somebody, it's nothing but a struggle to try and attack towards better positions. The leader gains one second every lap - that's how it's been in the last few races for us.

We fought to get fourth place, but the only opportunity was, obviously, at the last pit stop. We went there one after the other, but I made a mistake. I left too early and one of our mechanics hurt himself. Of course, you hope something like that never happens. Luckily, Pietro is mainly okay. His toe was broken but it's not taking too long to heal. It's nothing serious and I hope that he'll be back at the track with us very soon.

After the stop we dropped to sixth place on the grid, and at the end of the day it would have been better than nothing, but then the engine blew. Without any warning. Suddenly we came from a corner and felt something was wrong. Then the smoke came out.

We knew we had to take a risk for Valencia and we did not finish the race. It's a shame, but it's useless to grieve over that. The result will stay and it's time to just look ahead. Now we have a test in Monza, and then comes Spa.

I love that circuit and, obviously, I would love to race there for the whole year long. Spa is the best of all the circuits and hopefully we can finally get the car working to the way I want it to work.

We go to Spa to win it again. If somebody has doubts concerning my motivation, let them doubt. One thing I can tell is, that right now I am more motivated than ever.

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