Kimi Räikkönen Pleased with Singapore Comeback

After a weekend made all the more difficult by injury, our Iceman produced a storming drive to recover from his lowly P13 grid slot all the way to the podium at the Marina Bay Street Circuit. All in a day’s work for the fearless Finn it would seem…

What a race! Sum it up for us...

It’s been a difficult weekend, so to finish on the podium is a good result. The car felt good and it could have been even better if I’d been able to do more work in practice, but even with a better qualifying performance I think third was the maximum we could achieve today.

And with a back injury as well…?

The problem with my back hasn’t been ideal, but it felt much better than yesterday and I didn’t really notice it in the race; it’s only now that it doesn’t feel 100%.

That was quite some comeback after qualifying…

I had pretty good speed and could overtake a few people. Obviously you have more grip when you brake on the racing line and you know more or less where you have to brake; much more than you do on the inside. It wasn’t an easy one but we managed to get past and that’s the main thing.

It was quite tense for a while there at the end… were you nervous?

Not really. I was following Jenson [Button] and I could see that his tyres were going off so I just applied some pressure. I knew I had to get past him because obviously some other people had changed to new tyres and they were catching us quickly. I managed to pass him and pull away and luckily nobody managed to catch me in the end so it wasn’t too bad.

The strategy played out perfectly for you in the end; did you have that in mind all along?

We had a plan and we knew that if the safety car came out we would have to try to run until the end. Luckily some other teams couldn’t manage it and had to pit.

Have you ever had a more painful race?

For a long time I’ve had some issues with my back so it’s nothing new really. There have maybe been some more painful races where something goes wrong. When you don’t finish the race it’s more painful in a way, so it doesn’t always have to be physical. I have some time to recover before Korea and we were pretty strong there last year, so let’s see what we can do next time out.


Fonte: Lotus F1 Team

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