Kimi's Column - Turkish GP
Bogey from Turkey
We went to Istanbul leading the championship by 9 points. We came back home leading the championship by 7 points. You can count it any way you like, but for me it's more or less like the same it was.
I like to play golf. After Turkey I've got the same feeling like having a bogey, when playing golf
Obviously I had a very difficult weekend. The one that starts with problems goes on with problems, but – thank Heaven – did not finish too badly.
For sure we would just want to fight for wins. But this is racing. Sometimes it just goes wrong since the very beginning of the weekend. While you are not able to get everything right, you try to focus on saving all you can.
To limit the damage – like we did in Turkey this time.
We finished third. Obviously, after having a look at all that happened – not the least in the first corner after the start – I cannot be terribly disappointed after walking away from there with six points.
Actually I made it home to Switzerland in the evening and I managed to see Finland beating USA in the ice hockey world championship tournament in Canada. After that also my own result felt even better.
The Turkish weekend began badly on Friday morning. We were on our first flying lap while something went wrong with the gear shifting. After that we had to wait until the afternoon to carry on the work.
The weather was good in the morning, but there was some rain in the afternoon so we were not able to get a proper picture of our car and the tires. The Saturday morning was not that much better and we had to go to the qualifying without the best possible set up.
Obviously, at the end of the day, the car was pretty good with a heavier fuel, but I made a slight mistake in my lap and that cost too much. We got the fourth place in the grid that that really hurt us.
My start was not good, either. I was side by side with Heikki. It was tight, but I thought I could go pass him. He turned quite early in and then there was no room at all. I slowed down as much as I could, but my front wing touched lightly his rear tire. I lost a part of the front wing. There were people passing us from the right and then we were sixth after the first corner.
The car was not working as I would wanted it to work, but there was no time to change the wing. It would have cost more time compared to the time we lost using it to the finish.
Afterwards it would be always easy to say what we could have done differently. I never do that. This case is closed.
So far Barcelona has been the only weekend we have had no problems at all. Hopefully Monaco will be the next good race for us and we can do what we want to. I have a good feeling, we'll have a strong car there.
Now we'll test a couple of days in France. The whole team is very, very motivated, preparing to go to the circuits, where we were no that competitive last year.
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