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F1: Raikkonen Happy to Collect Six Points
Written by: Adam Cooper
RACER Magazine   http://www.racer.com/speedtv
05/11/2008 - 04:09 PM
Istanbul, Turkey
 
Raikkonen retains a seven-point edge over Massa and Hamilton in the championship table. (LAT Photo) ยป More Photos

Kimi Raikkonen says he was happy to come away with third place in Turkey, after a difficult weekend during which he struggled to match teammate Felipe Massa. The Finn was always going to have a hard time beating his team mate in the race after qualifying fourth, behind the two McLaren drivers.

"It wasn’t the best qualifying for me," he said. "We had a bit more fuel than the others, which is one reason, but also the lap wasn’t as good as I wanted. But anyhow I think it all started on Friday when we had a problem. But like I said we had a difficult weekend, but I am still happy being in third place and we didn’t lose too many points.

"It is early season and we still have good points, so we will see what we can do in the next few races. The next two races last year were very difficult for us so we need to see how strong we can be and hopefully we can challenge for wins and go from there."

Raikkonen’s chances were not helped by a bad start and first lap contact with Heikki Kovalainen, which left him with wing damage.

"I didn’t have a very good start. I got to the side of him on the braking.
Then I got a little bit squeezed on the inside and I tried to slow down and get behind him, but he just turned in a little bit. The unfortunate thing for both of us is that I broke the front wing, and he had a puncture. It didn’t help for either of us. We chose to use the front wing for the whole race because it takes too long to change it and it wasn’t too bad. The weekend was a little bit difficult but at least we got some good points and we need to get a better weekend at the next race."

Raikkonen said he wasn’t happy with the soft tires he used in the middle stint.

"Yeah, if I’d chosen now I would go onto the harder tires at the first pit stop but it’s too late. I think the first set of soft worked pretty well for me, but the second set, when it was new, was quite difficult and it was at a point when we needed to be faster, so that’s one of the reasons that we lost second place, but anyhow, it’s been a difficult weekend, so third place is the best we could do.

"For sure we tried to be in second place but we couldn’t, so I would rather take third than anything else."
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