Kimi Raikkonen believes Ferrari can aim to repeat is Monaco podium finish at the similarly high downforce Hungaroring this weekend.
The world champion team enjoyed its most competitive grand prix of its winless season so far at the street venue in May, Raikkonen narrowly missing out on pole position and then claiming its first podium of the campaign with third.
Raikkonen is now eyeing the same result on the return to a tight and twisty circuit, having scored just a single point in the four races since Monte Carlo.
“They say that Hungary is somehow similar to Monaco: true, the corners are very slow, but the Hungaroring is definitely more “forgiving” than the track at the Principality, where the tiniest slip will almost certainly make you end up in the barriers,” he said.
“Having said that the next race will definitely be the most similar one to the one at Monaco.
“This year we gained a place on the podium at Monaco and this is our objective for Budapest: we were able to fight for the pole until the last moment and I think that if we had gained it, the race would have gone in a completely different direction.
“We’ll retry in Hungary, but it will be difficult.”
However, while Ferrari emerged as then runaway points leader Brawn’s closest rival in Monaco, Raikkonen thinks the field has got even more competitive since then.
“The F60 should adapt pretty well to the track [in Hungary], but we know that all the other teams have improved their cars considerably after the race at Monaco, so there will be fierce competition,” he added.
“We’ll get a better picture of the situation on Friday morning after the first free practice.”
He added: “After two race weekends not really with summery weather at Silverstone and the Nürburgring there should be finally some high temperatures: our car is quite kind to the tyres compared to many others, which means that these conditions should help us more.”
Ferrari heads to Hungary with some decent momentum following recent races, Felipe Massa having raced strongly to fourth and third respectively in Britain and Germany.
Nevertheless with team boss Stefano Domenicali having indicated after the last race that Ferrari is poised to shift its development focus to the 2010 car very soon, Raikkonen says its results over the rest of the season will be dictated by the balance it strikes between this and next season.
“We’re at the 10th race of the championship, which has been very difficult up to now,” the 2007 champion said.
“We’ve been working hard to close the gap we had since the start between us and the leaders; naturally also all the others have been improving their cars.
“Furthermore with the fact that we can’t test this year during the championship it’s even more difficult to make up ground.
“How the season’s second part will go also depends on the decision of how to use the resources, because the work on next year’s car is now already in full swing.”
Click
No comments:
Post a Comment