FIA post-race press conference - Hungary

by - 7/26/2009 09:59:00 p.m.

Reproduced with kind permission of the FIA
1st Lewis Hamilton (McLaren), 1h 38m23.876s; 2nd Kimi Raikkonen (Ferrari), 1h 38m35.405s; 3rd Mark Webber (Red Bull), 1h38m40.762s

Q: Kimi, it’s been a long time since we had a McLaren versus Ferrari at the front. Tell us about your race.
Kimi Raikkonen: We got a very good start. That definitely helped. We knew before the race we needed to gain some places at the start to be able to fight for the podium. I was only fourth after the first few corners behind Lewis and then he overtook Mark and I could follow Mark and we went at the same time for the first pit stop. Then I don’t know if he had some issues or not and I got past him at the pit stop. After that really I was just driving my own race, trying to catch Lewis. I thought I had the speed for that at one point but then suddenly he started to go the same speed and then a little bit faster. The gap more or less stayed the same the whole time. Then I had some issues on the last pit stop and that didn’t help either but we had a good race. We knew that it would be difficult to challenge for the win right now. We were probably closer than we expected, so even with not such an easy weekend for the team, but we have got some good results, so hopefully that is something we can keep going like this and it is something positive at least this weekend for the team.

Q: Kimi, tell us about the moves you made at the start which came up on the board that will be investigated after the race. How did you see it?
KR: I don’t know about the whole thing, so if you can tell me what it’s about that would be nice.

Q: Off the start line into the first corner and the incident with Vettel?
KR: I haven’t even noticed if I touched somebody. I was in-between, I think, Mark and somebody else but I don’t know what is going on. That is the first time when you told me but I didn’t feel any touching or anything, so I cannot comment on that.


Q: Kimi, first of all you were nearly hit by Mark Webber at the first pit stop; did you see him coming out?
KR: Yeah, I saw when he came out. I took a little bit more space on the left hand side, so I was pretty sure that they would tell him that I was coming. I don’t know how close it was but I saw him and I gave him all the space that I could.

Q: What about your own second stop, you seemed to lose time there?
KR: Yeah, we probably had some problem, and we needed to do a manual pull-away and then it went on to anti-stall, so it was a bit confusing but I just took it easy because I knew that we had enough time from behind, we were not in a hurry, so it took much longer than it should. It’s always a bit difficult if you cannot make a normal proper pit stop with a proper start. When you try to make a manual pull away it can easily go to anti-stall, so that was the issue today.

Q: And generally speaking, how was the car?
KR: It was OK, nothing special. We had some issues in a few places, we knew that before. They had been there almost the whole weekend. We were a bit limited by what we could do this weekend. Overall, we still had good speed but I think we could have had better speed. It’s nice to be second, for the team and for all the people who have put in a lot of effort and it hasn’t been an easy year or an easy weekend with Felipe’s accident yesterday but we need to be happy. We knew that our car was probably not the fastest one but we still got a good result, good points. It was good but not exactly what we wanted. You are never going to be happy unless you’re in first place, Hopefully we can keep up this kind of speed and try to get good podium finishes and hopefully get at least one win this year.

Q: (Ian Parkes - The Press Association) This is to all three of you: I was just wondering how much the day has been overshadowed in some respects, given what has happened to Felipe and his current condition at the moment?

KR: It’s the same story. It was really a very, very unlucky situation where he ended up. As long as we race with open cockpits our heads are always the worst place and the first place that’s going to be hit if there’s something flying around. What happened was really unfortunate but luckily enough he’s more or less OK. He’s probably going to be a hundred percent fine in a little time. We in the team all hope that he’s going to be fine and come back soon. This is a part of racing and we all know that. It’s just a sad thing to happen.

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