Kimi Raikkonen proved he and Lotus have what it takes this year to become Formula 1 world champions after storming to victory in the season-opening Australian Grand Prix.

The Enstone-based team suggested during winter testing they had taken a step forward from last season.

And they underlined that around Melbourne’s Albert Park as Raikkonen took the chequered flag for the 20th time in his F1 career.

The 2007 world champion was joined by two-times title winner Fernando Alonso and reigning three-times king Sebastian Vettel on the podium.


Raikkonen had started from seventh on the grid after the second and third qualifying sessions had been held over until Sunday due to adverse weather on Saturday.

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Kimi Raikkonen has said that victory in the first race of the season in Australia has made no difference to Lotus Renault's ambitions.

Raikkonen was a somewhat surprise winner ahead of Fernando Alonso and Sebastian Vettel at Melbourne on Sunday and now heads to this weekend's Grand Prix in Malaysia in confident mood.

"We don't do anything different this weekend than we did in the previous race or last year," said Raikkonen, who won the world title with Ferrari in 2007.

"If people think that we are leaders, it makes no difference to our work. What we did or what we're going to do this weekend or any other weekend. Like I said, we try to do best and hopefully we can score some good points."

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Lotus boss Eric Boullier believes that Kimi Raikkonen and Roman Grosjean will perform better at the start of 2013 than they did 12 months ago.

Boullier believes the lessons learnt from 2012 - the progress the drivers have made combined with a better technical understanding from the engineers - bodes well for Lotus next year.

"I would be very happy to start the season with the same car performance we had last year relative to everyone else," Boullier told Autosport.

"I know both our drivers will be race fit and, let's say, delivering more than 12 months ago.

"On the team front, last year we lost a little bit of ground during the summer, but we know where and we know why it happened. We learned from our mistake and we will not do the same strategy with next year's car development.

"At the same time, we performed well at the end of this season, and found some of our performance back, so it was a good fight until the end. It was good to see Enstone was capable of delivering as much as the bigger teams.

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Germany's Auto Motor und Sport said there is an issue in terms of promised bonus money in the Finn's 2012 contract, given his unexpectedly large points tally.

"I don't know where this stuff comes from," the 2007 world champion's spokesman Riku Kuvajan was quoted by the Finnish broadcaster MTV3.

"I can't say anything about it."

Now, on Wednesday, the German magazine said other staff at the Enstone based team are waiting for their pay-cheques.

Auto Motor und Sport said the team's management is holding out for the latest installment of commercial income from the sport's owners, headed by chief executive Bernie Ecclestone.

The report said Lotus is waiting for that money to "pay the wages of 493 employees and Kimi Raikkonen".

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Kimi Raikkonen is hoping for warmer race day weather which better suits the Lotus, while Romain Grosjean faces an uphill climb after a gearbox penalty demoted him to ninth on the grid.

Kimi Raikkonen was pleasantly surprised on two fronts in the first-ever qualifying session at the Circuit of the Americas, ahead of the 2012 United States Grand prix in Austin, Texas.

One was the warmer weather that they encountered after a chilly Friday; and the other was the pace of the Lotus in qualifying trim. Raikkonen felt that the two were not unrelated.

"I was actually expecting a more difficult qualifying session today, but the car was the best it's felt all weekend so it turned out to be quite good," said the Finn, who posted the fifth fastest time in the last part of qualifying on Saturday. "The warmer conditions make the car work much better and that certainly makes a difference."

Raikkonen was out-qualified by his team mate Romain Grosjean who set the fourth fastest time in Q3, but the Frenchman has a five-place grid penalty that will drop him down to ninth on the grid and raise Raikkonen up to fourth - which was not great news as far as the former world champion was concerned.

"Starting on the dirty side of the grid maybe isn't the best," he admitted, concurring with speculation from some teams that starting on the 'even-numbered' side of the grid could cost a driver one or even two positions off the grid in the run up to turn 1.

"It's been very slippery anyhow, the circuit, and then the racing line goes more or less over the right-hand side so we expect it's going to be very slippery on the left.

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Kimi Raikkonen looks set to be the first driver since Nick Heidfeld in 2008 (BMW) to finish every race in a complete formula one season.

The Finn’s rare feat, delivering him an almost certain third in the drivers’ points standings, has coincided with his return to the sport with Lotus after a two-year rallying hiatus.

“Our record shows that the team can build a reliable car and that I know how to drive it,” said Raikkonen.

Meanwhile, the former McLaren and Ferrari driver gave the same three-word answer – “Never give up” – to three separate questions in an interview for F1′s official website.

The questions were: “What’s been your most valuable life lesson?”, “If you could give your younger self some advice what would it be?”, and “What’s the best advice you have been given?”

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