Kimi glad to be back

"I don't have much to lose," says World Champion

Last updated: 11th October 2008   Subscribe to RSS Feed

Kimi glad to be back

Raikkonen: Still not really happy

Related links

Teams

Drivers

Also see

Kimi Raikkonen is hoping to use his front row grid slot at the Japanese Grand Prix as the springboard for a first victory in over five months.

The defending World Champion has not won a race since the Spanish Grand Prix at the end of April and the last time he scored any points was at Hungary in August, when he finished third.

Raikkonen therefore stands 27 points behind Championship leader, and polesitter at the Fuji Speedway, Lewis Hamilton, with three races, including Sunday's, remaining.

Although he still has a mathematical chance of retaining his title, the Finn admitted after crashing out of the Singapore Grand Prix two weeks ago that he was out of the reckoning.

However, Raikkonen has still yet to explicitly state whether he will support the Championship bid of team-mate Felipe Massa.

"I don't have much to lose," he said after qualifying second on the grid. "For sure, we want to try to win both Championships, and it won't be easy against McLaren, but I will try to do the best that I can and fight for the win.

"I don't really look at the Championship too much now; I just try to win some races and finish with a nice last three races this season."

Below par

If Raikkonen's race performances so far this season have been below par, his qualifying outings have certainly not been those expected from a driver reputedly the quickest of all in terms of sheer pace.

Massa has generally held the upper hand in qualifying this season as he has established himself as a Championship contender.

However, the Brazilian could only manage fifth on the grid at Fuji.

But, in spite of his improved showing, Raikkonen said he was still unable to extract all he wanted from his F2008 car.

"It's nice to be back (on the front row), but it's still not where I want to be," he added.

"I'm second, but I'm still not really happy with how things are going and still not 100 percent happy with the car, and it's quite frustrating.

"The qualifying has been the worst thing for us, and we should be strong in the race so we'll see what we can do on Sunday.

"It hasn't been easy in the races lately, but we've done a lot of work and finally we got a little bit of a result out of it."