Kimi Raikkonen may have finished fifth in Sunday's Chinese Grand Prix, but it was a tough fight for the Finnish racer who at one stage was stronger than his teammate, Sebastian Vettel, who eventually finished in second place.
Kimi's biggest problem during the race was lack of grip from the front end of his Ferrari, a scenario we have heard him complain about over the team radio on several occasions since his return to the Maranello based squad.
Exactly why the Flying Finn was having the issues while his teammate wasn't is anyone's guess, but the point still remains that he was far from happy with the handling of his car as he struggled to get past the Red Bull of Daniel Ricciardo, something Vettel managed to do with ease.
At one stage later in the race Kimi was asking if he should come in and change tyres as the front end had almost gone on him, but the team opted to leave him on track, a decision that more than likely cost him at least one position, if not two. It wasn't until lapped cars behind started to catch back up that the team decided to put on fresh rubber. By then, it was too late.
"t was not a very strong race, the car felt good with fresh tires, but we seemed to lose the front very quickly and I was struggling; in a place like this that's very tricky and gives a lot of laptime away,” Kimi explained after the race. “I feel that, even with that, we should have had a better result: maybe we could have changed the tires a bit earlier, but it's always easy to speak after the race, now we have look at the data and understand. This result is far from ideal but this is what we have got, hopefully next week we can make things better.”
Many are saying that if team orders were called earlier in the race when Kimi started to have issues and Vettel was being held up as a result, that Ferrari could have taken their second win of the season. Possible? Yes, but not definite as we all know how Lewis Hamilton seems to be able to pull out more pace when his lead is threatened. But, without a doubt, Kimi did hold Vettel up, costing the German some very valuable time indeed.
As Murray Walker used to say, F1 is IF backwards, so there is no point dwelling on what might have been. What Ferrari needs to do now is to listen to their driver and help increase the front grip of his car, otherwise we will see similar situations to this one on various other circuits on the 2017 schedule.
This makes two races in a row where Kimi has struggled and his teammate has not and as a result Ferrari President Sergio Marchionne wants answers.
“Maybe they should sit around a table and he should talk to him,” Marchionne said. “Today he seemed to be busy with other stuff. Vettel was more aggressive."
Could the car be built more around Vettel and what he is comfortable with than Kimi? The team says no, but clearly there is something going awry for the Finn, they just have to work out what it is, and quickly.
