(Scuderia Ferrari SpA via Twitter)
Kimi Raikkonen has stated that Ferrari are still on course with the development of their new car despite crashing the F14-T heavily just moments before the end of the final day of the first Bahrain test today.
The Finn explained that he was on the kerb and experienced 'massive wheel spin' and lost control of the car and hit the wall. He went on to say that 'things happen and that he wouldn't say that the accident was his fault.
Raikkonen has had a difficult two days in Bahrain as on Friday he lost valuable track time due to the fact that the team suffered telemetry issues with the new car. Despite this however the Finn completed 124 laps over the two days he was in the car. The Italian team have combined total of 284 laps as Fernando Alonso completed 160 laps during his two days in the car.
Raikkonen explained that the team suffered no issues at all on Saturday and would have liked to have completed more laps but that he damaged the car. It is obviously not ideal that the car was damaged but at least it happened at the end of the second test as it gives the team five days to sort out the car as teams are restricting to using one chassis during winter testing.
Raikkonen also confirmed that due to the many red flags out on track the team didn't get everything they wanted to do done but achieved an awful lot and he is confident that they will be able to complete full race simulations during next week's final test in Bahrain.
So far throughout the pre-season testing period Ferrari have been the only non Mercedes powered cars to have shown great pace as Renault have had well documented struggles. Raikkonen will be back in action next week although Ferrari have yet to announce their schedule for next week.
©Ben Johnston 2014
No comments:
Post a Comment