Formula One news

Raikkonen predicts close battle

Kimi Raikkonen may have taken a dominant victory in the Malaysian Grand Prix, but the Ferrari driver is not counting his chickens. He believes the 2008 season will be a very close faught battle and targets a qualifying improvement for Ferrari to prevail.

"This is going to be a very hard fight for the title," Raikkonen said. "We have to improve in Qualifying. When you're strong on Saturday, it helps a lot on Sunday. It's nice to be back home, where it's a bit cooler. It was really hot in Australia and Malaysia. And it will be hot again in Bahrain. But that will not be a big problem after two weeks with really high temperatures."

"I won my first ever Grand Prix in Malaysia," he added. "And also back then it was a pretty easy win. This shows that when the car is set up well, Sepang is a circuit made for me. I was asked if our season started in Malaysia. This is not the case, because we made one point in Melbourne. We fought and we picked up one point, which is always good to have. The team really knew how to take the race in Sepang. They didn't start to panic after the bad race weekend in Australia. And I know that they won't be carried away by their enthusiasm after this success."

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