Raikkonen looking forward

Flying Finn "not particularly interested in understanding last year"

Last updated: 24th February 2009   Subscribe to RSS Feed

Raikkonen looking forward

Raikkonen: Wants to talk about this year

Related links

Teams

Drivers

Also see

Ahead of the upcoming Formula One season, Kimi Raikkonen has said he is not dwelling on the disappointments of 2008.

Having taken the title in 2007, the Finn endured a largely difficult season last year, with Ferrari team-mate Felipe Massa ultimately proving better able to mount a World Championship challenge.

Raikkonen won just two races - the second of which, the Spanish Grand Prix, took place in April - as he struggled with the handling of the F2008.

Although he finished the season on a strong note, bagging three successive podium finishes on his way to third in the drivers' standings, Raikkonen's title defence was not what had been anticipated.

However, the 29-year-old told Corriere della Sera he would rather not analyse what went wrong, preferring instead to concentrate on this year's Championship and Ferrari's new F60.

Asked for his opinion on the team's new car, Raikkonen said: "It's too early to tell. For sure the feeling has been good.

"You always learn from your mistakes, but I'm not particularly interested in understanding last year: we can't change the way things went, and it doesn't help us to do things better now.

"I'm happy to talk about what we can do this year."

Objective

Raikkonen also denied that a need to prove the doubters wrong was fuelling his desire to succeed this season.

"No, I only try to give my best," he said. "Everyone knows what we can do and our objective is to win the Championship.

"There are many things that need to go well to achieve that, and I'm not necessarily talking about luck. But I'm not thinking of that now: I think about doing some good tests and having a strong start to the season in the early races."

As for the recent Bahrain test, Raikkonen says it went "very well. It was a good first step, everything worked. As for slicks, in the end I haven't found many differences compared to when we tried them on the old car before Christmas".

Raikkonen added that he is only concentrating on Ferrari's progress and refusing to follow the lap times or news about rivals.

"I have no idea how the other teams are working," he said. "So far the lap times have all been very close, but during testing you use different tyres, you try things that will turn out to be good or bad only later.

"But I'm neither interested nor worried about the others. Let's think about ourselves."