Raikkonen calls on the Alfa Romeo F1 team to “wake up”

Raikkonen made the comment on team radio after finishing the British GP in 15th place with no points.

The Finn made up starting positions in both the Saturday sprint and the Grand Prix itself. He spent the last part of the main event battling Sergio Perez’s Red Bull but lost any chance of making the top 10 after contact resulted in a late spin.

Raikkonen has only scored one point so far in 2021 when he finished 10th in Azerbaijan, while his teammate Antonio Giovinazzi also only finished 10th.

The Hinwil team stopped developing their 2021 car a few weeks ago, aside from the work required to pass the more stringent rear wing deflection tests. After the flag at Silverstone, Raikkonen’s engineer suggested that he could have finished 10th without contact with Perez.

“Maybe or maybe we have to make the car fast, it’s easy,” he replied. “It is impossible to fight them. The same, the same, and try to fight with the other cars. Come on, we have to wake up and do something. “

Raikkonen later admitted it had been a tough afternoon, defending rather than attacking.

“We expected it would not be an easy race for us here and it turned out to be,” he said when asked by Motorsport.com about the race at Silverstone. “After the start we were quite OK, but the longer we drive, the more I look in the mirror than I look ahead.

“We tried to fight, but it wasn’t enough here. Maybe we can be a little better off on a different route, but do you know what can you do? “

Commenting on the Perez incident, he said, “I think we had some fights during the race and obviously they were a lot faster. But I managed to hold him back for a long time.

“And in the end we were a few corners next to each other and then I was outside the previous corner, inside the next, and I don’t know, maybe he didn’t see me, but in the end I turned and that’s about it.

“I was fine and then all of a sudden he just came over and then I left. But I would much rather fight for the position. 11th or 12th place doesn’t really help us. “

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Alfa’s director of track development, Xevi Pujolar, admitted that the team lacks the pace to score points at the moment.

“We knew again that we would fight close to the points,” said the Spaniard. “And if something happens up front, we can get very close. But we are still missing a little more.

“We tried to be on the aggressive side with Kimi, we boxed pretty early, but we needed a little more speed to get to the points in the middle of the race.”