Thursday 23 April 2015

Arrivabene spoke to the Ferrari design office to make sure the SF15-T suited Raikkonen

(© Ben Johnston 2015)

Scuderia Ferrari Team Principal Maurizio Arrivabene has revealed that in December he sat down with the design department at the Maranello based outfit to ensure that the new SF15-T chassis would suit Kimi Raikkonen’s driving style.

The Finn who returned to Ferrari in 2014 endured his worst season in Formula One failing to secure a podium finish and was beaten comprehensively by team mate Fernando Alonso.

The Spaniard left the team at the end of last season to re-join McLaren who have a new partnership with Honda. Raikkonen showed as soon as the new car hit the track during winter testing that it suited his driving style far more compared to last season’s chassis. This is not the only thing that has helped the Iceman however as he has a new English engineer with Dave Greenwood joining the team from Marussia.

While the Finn retired from the first race of the season due to wheel nut that was not correctly fastened during a pit-stop he followed this up with two fourth place finishes in Malaysia and China. Last time out in Bahrain the Finn secured his first podium in over a year as he came home in second place behind race winner Lewis Hamilton beating new team mate Sebastian Vettel for the first time this season.

Kimi Raikkonen has praised the work by the Ferrari team over the winter particularly in the power unit department. The Finn went on to say that the main thing from last season is that the team have improved everyone.

(© Ben Johnston)

© Ben Johnston 2015


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