Räikkönen: Comparisons have no interest
Kimi Räikkönen reflected on his first day of testing after his return to Ferrari: Iceman had a good day, but knows that the road will still be long.
Author of the best time on the first day of testing in Jerez, Kimi Räikkönen shared his first impressions with the press at the end of the day. The Finnish driver was the most active on Tuesday, with 31 laps completed, which remains relatively low compared to the winter testing in 2013.
The Ferrari driver regrets this but explains that it is a logical consequence of the regulatory changes: « Obviously, everyone wants to see more laps and we want to drive more, but it’s all very normal with such a change. It will take some time before we can drive at 100% all the time without any problems. »
Despite a very minor scare at the start of the session, the Ferrari F14-T was the most diligent single-seater: « I think we started quite correctly. We have a solid foundation to work from in the coming days. The times of these tests mean nothing, and we will only start to understand something in Bahrain. Are the cars slower? It’s pointless to make comparisons with the past because everything is completely different. »
On upcoming projects, the 2007 world champion believes that the challenge of learning and integrating new elements will be the most complicated: “I think the biggest challenge is to make all the new elements work as we want them to and work together,” he explained to Autosport. “The new cars are much more complicated than the old ones and there are thousands of details that can slow down the work,” he specified on the official Scuderia website.
On the other hand, regarding the part he’s responsible for, the driving of the Ferrari, Räikkönen isn’t more shaken than that: « It’s more delicate than what we’re used to, but from a driving perspective, I don’t think it’s that different, even though it’s too early to give an opinion on that. »
« It’s just the first day with all the new stuff, so it will take time to get up to speed. One more day, a lot of work to do, we know that. But we were expecting these first tests to learn things, so I don’t really feel such a big difference between this year and last, » he concluded.
