the return of the iceman?
Kimi Raikkonen warned his rivals that there is more to come from
him and Ferrari after winning the French Grand Prix his first
victory since the season-opener at Melbourne in March.
The Finn beat his team-mate Felipe Massa to the flag at Magny-Cours
after passing the Brazilian during their final pit stops.
And after admitting relief at finally breaking his run of poor
results, Kimi promised to deliver more of the same in the coming
races.
"It's nice," he said.
"I think we have had a bit of a hard time, but I kind of expected
to have a bit difficult times.
"Okay people always think that you've lost it when you don't have a
good result.
"But we have just worked hard and tried to get it right and I think
that we can still improve. We are still not where we want to be but
we are definitely happier with the car since the last test, and the
last races even but we just couldn't get it together so.
"I think we have the basis to have a good speed in the car now so I
hope we can keep this up in the next races.
Raikkonen said that making a good getaway, a weak point for him
this season, was a vital factor in his win on Sunday.
"Finally the start worked for me and it helped a lot," he
said.
"I think the car was good all the time but not exactly perfect, but
I was very happy with the car.
"I just tried to push and keep up with Felipe because I knew I was
going to stop a bit later. Just before the first stop I had a quite
a bit of traffic, but in the second stop we managed to get ahead of
him.
"It was a good day for me and for the team."
Raikkonen added that while had pushed hard in the laps between
Massa's stop and his own he had struggled to pace the Brazilian in
the middle stint of the race.
"We needed to have a good run in to the second stop," he
said.
"I was a bit further away than I really wanted to be from him, but
that's racing. I couldn't really stay close enough. But it worked
out perfectly in the end so I couldn't ask for more.
"Of course you would rather start from the front, it makes your
life easier, but we knew we should be okay in the race.
"It all depended on what happened at the start and we had a very
good start this time."
