The calmness brought by Ferrari’s new driver lineup was a “relief” to the team, Kimi Raikkonen says.<\/p>\n
Last year, turmoil at the fabled Maranello marque was arguably worsened by tension in the pits, where Finn Raikkonen and the now-departed Fernando Alonso barely exchanged a word.<\/p>\n
But this year, in a lineup that will remain in place for 2016, Raikkonen was paired with Sebastian Vettel, who is not only a quadruple world champion but also a rare friend of Raikkonen’s within the F1 paddock.<\/p>\n
“It is of course nicer for the drivers that they are on speaking terms, are able to work together and talk about things,” Raikkonen told the Finnish broadcaster MTV this week on a media visit to Helsinki.<\/p>\n
“For the team, it is a pretty big relief and also an advantage that there is no secrecy or politics,” the 2007 world champion added.<\/p>\n
As for working with Vettel, Raikkonen continued: “We both like pretty much the same sort of car — our setups are always pretty close.\u00a0 That makes it easier for the team to work and also to develop the car.”<\/p>\n
Ferrari, however, openly considered ending the pairing for 2016, with Valtteri Bottas said to have been the obvious candidate to replace the older Finn.<\/p>\n
But Bernie Ecclestone thinks Ferrari was right to re-sign the 36-year-old, telling La Gazzetta dello Sport: “Are you sure there is someone who could have done a better job for Ferrari than Kimi Raikkonen?\u00a0 I’m not sure.”<\/p>\n
Raikkonen also dismisses the notion that he is now struggling to be fully competitive in F1.<\/p>\n
“Next year will be another chance to start from zero,” he said, admitting that his 2015 campaign overall was only “average”.<\/p>\n
“However, the pace was ok compared to last year.\u00a0 If you do not have the momentum, that is a much more worrying situation, even if of course there is always a lot of room for improvement.”<\/p>\n
\u00a9 RIF | GMM<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The calmness brought by Ferrari’s new driver lineup was a “relief” to the team, Kimi Raikkonen says. Last year, turmoil at the fabled Maranello marque was arguably worsened by tension in the pits, where Finn Raikkonen and the now-departed Fernando Alonso barely exchanged a word. But this year, in a lineup that will remain in …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25061,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[3],"tags":[5262,93,5340,152,164],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31655"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31655"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31655\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31656,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31655\/revisions\/31656"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}