Raikkonen 'we will know how good the new car is in February'

(fornula1.ferrari.com)

Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen has confirmed that he is has been impressed with what he has seen in the wind-tunnel in relation to next seasons car but admits that the team will not know if it is an improvement on this years F14-T, 

The Finn has struggled this season having returned to Ferrari after two years with the Lotus F1 Team that has seen the Iceman score just 47 points compared to Fernando Alonso's 149, Speaking to the Ferrari Formula One website ahead of this weekend's Brazilian Grand Prix Raikkonen said:

'Every season when you don’t win the championship, you can more or less forget it. Raikkonen went on to say:

'You are here to win races and championships and if you don’t manage it you have failed, whether you are second or twentieth. It’s been a hard year but we have learned things that will help us in future. But it’s not much fun when you have difficulties race after race. 

That’s how it goes sometimes in Formula 1, but we have to believe in what we do and I’m sure we can get back to where we should be. During this year, we improved a lot on the engine and electronics side and for sure the car has got more downforce now. It’s a much better car than it was at the beginning of the year.'

The Ferrari team head into this weekends race in Brazil 42 points behind the Williams Martini Racing Team in the race for third place in the Constructors championship. Speaking about what the team can expect from next years car Raikkonen stated:

'I’ve seen numbers from it and so on, but it’s the same story every year; you don’t really know until you get the car on the circuit, 

They started very early on the design of next year’s car and the designers listened to us and made some changes to try and improve in areas where we feel this year’s car has been lacking in performance. I believe we can have a much better car and a much better package. How good? We will know in February next year.'

Raikkonen had a difficult race last time out at the Circuit of the Americas in Austin Texas as he finished the race in 13th place one lap down on race winner Mercedes AMG PETRONAS F1 Team's Lewis Hamilton.

© Ben Johnston 2014