Kimi Raikkonen has remained upbeat about his chances in this weekend’s Korean Grand Prix despite having a large crash during the first practice session that caused a great deal of damage to the front and rear of his Lotus E21 car.
The Finnish driver made a mistake coming out of the final corner that saw him lose the rear end of the car and spear into the wall that divides the pit entry and the race track. Raikkonen admitted that this was down to driver error alone, and thanked his team for reacting so quickly and getting him back out for the second session on Friday afternoon.
“Obviously it didn’t help that I destroyed part of the car this morning; maybe I ran out of talent there!” Raikkonen joked. “It didn’t cause too much damage and the car was fine for the second practice, even if the guys had quite a hurry to fix it. They did a good job and we managed to complete everything we wanted today.”
In terms of pace, Raikkonen is feeling good for the race on Sunday despite finishing eighth in both sessions around one second behind pace-setter Lewis Hamilton.
“The car feels quite strong – especially on the long runs – so that’s good news for the race. On the short runs it wasn’t exactly as I wanted, but we still have some time to make improvements there.”
Raikkonen had said that he would assess his back injury during practice before making a final decision on whether or not to race this weekend. However, he appears to be back to full fitness as he enters his final six races with Lotus ahead of a move to Ferrari in 2014.
