Singapore GP - Race

by - 11/05/2012 02:43:00 p.m.


Kimi Räikkönen fought back from twelfth on the grid to maintain his third position in the Drivers’ Championship with a battling sixth place in the Singapore Grand Prix. Romain Grosjean finished close behind in seventh after a gruelling race with two safety car periods and a number of retirements. The team remains fourth in the Constructors’ Championship, 95 points ahead of Mercedes in fifth and 14 behind Ferrari in third.

- Both drivers started on Pirelli’s super soft compound.
- Kimi pitted for his first set of soft compound tyres on lap 13, and his second set of softs just as the first safety car came out on lap 32.

Kimi Räikkönen, P6, E20-05
After the result in qualifying today’s race was not too bad, but I think we had a chance to do a bit better. We weren’t quick enough to be fighting for the podium but the first safety car didn’t help us and maybe we could have gained an extra place without that. We were definitely faster than Michael [Schumacher] and Nico [Rosberg] but we ended up stuck behind them for most of the race which was frustrating. It’s so hard to overtake here that you have to rely on passing people in the pit stops or on someone making a mistake. I’m still third in the Drivers’ Championship but we’ve got some improvements to make for the next races to be fighting with the cars in front. Hopefully we can make a step forward in Japan and take it from

Eric Boullier, Team Principal
We had a difficult start to the weekend but the team did a good job to recover. Qualifying was frustrating after both cars showed strong pace in Q1 and the first part of Q2 but ultimately fell short of what we were hoping for in the end. The race pace from both cars was good and although we were unlucky with the first safety car our strategy worked well. After a difficult weekend for us Kimi is still third in the Drivers’ Championship and we have not lost too much ground to McLaren and Red Bull in the Constructors’ standings so that is a big positive. The fact that we feel our lack of performance here was quite unexpected shows our ambition and our priority for the rest of the season will be to make sure we’re in the sort of positions we know we can achieve right from the start of each weekend.

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