There cannot be a race weekend without Kimi Räikkönen giving his race engineer orders over the team radio and not the other way around. And the Iceman managed to hold this record over the Portuguese Grand Prix.
ADVERTISING
The article continues below this ad
During qualifying, the Alfa Romeo driver was quite dissatisfied with his race engineer after landing on a corner with nowhere to go on a flying lap amid a rapidly approaching car.
Formula 1 F1 – Emilia Romagna Grand Prix – Autodromo Enzo and Dino Ferrari, Imola, Italy – Kimi Raikkonen of Alfa Romeo in action during practice REUTERS / Jennifer Lorenzini
Ultimately, Raikkonen radioed the team to wake up, claiming that Alfa Romeo had enough crew to deal with situations like this and that could keep them from getting into such danger.
ADVERTISING
The article continues below this ad
What did Kimi Raikkonen say?
The radio message begins with his race engineer warning that Carlos Sainz and Antonio Giovinazzi are coming from behind. And here everything started to get bad for Raikkonen.
“Yes, but now you’ve told me that Bottas is pushing and you are going to slow down. And I had nowhere to go. I was stuck in the middle of a king’s corner. When Sainz came! ” he said.
“You have to do it right. Which pushes and which doesn’t. It’s not that hard to see. We have enough people we can … someone can find out what’s going on.
Because of the different heights spread across the track, visibility can be quite a hassle for the drivers and the teams then had to be the third eye.
A difficult weekend in Portimao for Raikkonen
Raikkonen had a pretty bad qualifying on Saturday; The Finn only managed P15 in contrast to the impressive P12 of his team-mate. However, things should get worse at Sunday’s race for the older Alfa Romeo driver.
After a decent short break in the event of a light failure, he landed directly on Giovinazzi’s tail in lap 2. However, Raikkonen misjudged the effect of the wind deflector when he left his teammates behind on the main straight.
As a result, he lost his front wing, part of which was stuck under his car and damaged the floor. The debris also prevented its front tires from turning.
ADVERTISING
The article continues below this ad
Therefore, Raikkonen had no choice but to drive his car straight onto the gravel at Turn 2 and park his car next to the barriers. This was the weekend for the Iceman after a pretty strong performance at Imola.
But can Kimi Raikkonen make a strong comeback this weekend in Barcelona and secure his first points of the season? Only time can tell.
ADVERTISING
The article continues below this ad
SUBMERGED DEPTH
