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Raikkonen blames ‘too many small issues’ for Ferrari frustrations

Kimi Raikkonen feels Ferrari generally performed well in 2016 but were let down too frequently by small issues which built up over the season.

The Finnish driver ended a difficult campaign for Ferrari sixth overall in the drivers' world championship, slipping from last year's fourth, while the Italian squad fell behind Red Bull in the world constructors' pecking order.

Raikkonen refused to hide his disappointment at the season from the team's perspective despite being happier with his campaign and felt too many smaller issues plagued his progress.

After three podiums in the opening five races, the Finn's season somewhat fell away in conjunction with Red Bull finding useful gains to leapfrog Ferrari in terms of race pace and crucially in qualifying.

"What matters is that the end result was far from what we, as Ferrari, as a team, wanted from this year," Raikkonen said. "There are positive things, like the way we have been working lately, the way we are doing things, the way we work well together even if the results weren't always what we wanted.

"It was far from an ideal year for all of us. We did good races and not so good races, had too many small issues but that's what happens in racing sometimes."

As well as losing outright performance gains on its rivals as the year progressed, Raikkonen saw two races slip away from him in the wet in Monaco and Brazil while suffered a pit stop blunder with a loose wheel in Austin which ended his race.

Assessing his own performance, Raikkonen believes it was his his best season since returning to the Ferrari fold in 2014 but accepts he can't celebrate it with the team's year below-par.

"If I just compare it with the last two years, it has been better from my side but we cannot be very happy because we're far from where we want to be, both me and the team," he said. "There were good things but the end result was nowhere near what we wanted.

"We have to take it and accept where we finished. But we cannot be happy and I'm not happy."

With Ferrari retaining Raikkonen and team-mate Sebastian Vettel for 2017 ahead of the new Pirelli tyres and the revision of aerodynamic regulations, the 2007 F1 world champion feels his team has reasons to be optimistic.

"It would be a lot more fun for a lot of us to be at the front, but once we'll get the new cars on the circuit we'll see," he said. "There are a lot of changes, so it's pointless to speculate with such big changes. Hopefully we'll be where we want to be and where we also deserve to be." 

Zdroj: crash.net