(Scuderia Ferrari SpA via Twitter)
Kimi Raikkonen has stated that his clean race at today's Belgian Grand Prix at the Spa Francorchamps circuit just shows what he can do when he has a trouble free race. The Finn, who started this afternoon's race in eighth place following a few mistakes in qualifying yesterday bounced back by making his first stop early and taking advantage of better pace from the F14-T.
The Finn also finished the race in fourth place which was his best result of the season so far and in doing so he has broken into the top ten in the driver's championship and has also beaten team mate Fernando Alonso for the first time this season.
Raikkonen stated:
'We had decided to tackle this race more aggressively, making an early stop to get ahead of the cars that had yet to pit and that meant I was able to stay with the leaders for much of the race.
When Bottas in the Williams began to close on me, I knew I didn’t have the speed to defend on the straight and with a few laps to go, he managed to pass me. In general, I’m happy with how this weekend ended. We knew it would not be easy on this circuit, but we did our utmost and for the first time, we managed to have a clean race without any problems.
The car has improved and today the pace was good. Fourth place shows we are going in the right direction, but it doesn’t mean we can settle for that.
Today, we scored a good number of points, but we are here to win and we will continue to work to reach the top.'
Raikkonen has now scored a sixth and a fourth place finish in the last two races at the Hungarian and the Belgian Grand Prix and is now just one point behind former Ferrari team mate and the man he replaced at the Italian team Williams Martini Racing's Felipe Massa.
© Ben Johnston 2014
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