Formula One news

Raikkonen unhappy despite return to podium

Kimi Raikkonen remains unhappy with his performance despite returning to the podium with a third place finish in Hungary. What that result doesn't tell, is how he struggled to match team mate Massa again until the Brazilian's engine gave up.

"The Hungarian weekend was quite disappointing for me: the only positive thing is the result," Raikkonen said. "Whenever you're able to narrow the gap to the leader it's very important. I gained more points than any other of my direct competitors, which is pretty positive as well before this short break. I'm going to Finland to chill out a bit, although the weather forecast is not really good."

"I don't want to deny that the last races didn't go as I wanted," he added. "Every time something strange happened and we didn't manage to find the best possible set up for the car. We tried to find a good compromise, but it didn't help. We've got to solve that problem now for the upcoming race at Valencia. The Qualifying was the decisive moment also at Budapest, in a negative way. In my second try in Q3 I couldn't keep the car on the track: that was my fault. You can't pretend to win the title if you're always starting from the sixth position. You can even drive one second faster per lap than the one ahead of you, but if you start from behind you can't use the pace you've got."

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