After Mercedes on Tuesday, it was Lotus team’s turn to encounter problems with its gearbox yesterday morning. A mechanical failure forced Kimi R\u00e4ikk\u00f6nen to stay in his garage for a good part of the day.<\/p>\n
\u00ab We had a problem with the gearbox and it took time to repair. That’s all, \u00bb reported the Finn, laconically at the press conference.<\/p>\n
Having had barely two hours of testing, Iceman still believes that his day was not completely useless: \u00ab We were able to drive in the afternoon, so the day wasn’t totally wasted. You always learn something when you drive. It’s testing, it’s better that it happens now than during a race weekend. But if you could choose, you’d prefer not to have any problems. \u00bb<\/p>\n
And then two hours is better than nothing: \u00ab It’s not worse than last year [Lotus had to give up the second week of testing due to problems with the front suspension]. It’s another year, another story. Even if you don’t do tests, you have to race and be fast. It doesn’t matter how many laps you do. We are trying to do our best. If we could choose, we would do more laps than we did today, \u00bb explains the Finnish driver.<\/p>\n
Kimi R\u00e4ikk\u00f6nen will be back on track during the last week of testing that will take place in Barcelona from February 28 to March 3. In the meantime, it is Romain Grosjean who will take the wheel of the Lotus E21 today and tomorrow.<\/p>\n
From our special correspondent in Barcelona<\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Kimi R\u00e4ikk\u00f6nen was not very busy yesterday, unlike the Lotus mechanics who had to repair the E21’s gearbox. At the end of the day, the Finn saw things from the positive side.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":41041,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,1749],"tags":[329,777],"class_list":["post-17822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-f1","category-news","tag-essais-prives","tag-raikkonen"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n