Chinese GP: Räikkönen does not want to repeat last year's scenario

For Kimi Räikkönen, it shouldn't be too difficult to do better this season in Shanghai. For his second Chinese Grand Prix under the colors of Lotus, the Finn does not want to relive the scenario of last year: enjoying a good pace in the race, the 2007 world champion had lost many positions until going out points at the end of his final stint, the fault of a set of worn-out tires. “Unfortunately we didn't score a single point here last season so we can only improve from here.”, estimates the winner of the first Grand Prix of the season, in Australia. “There's no reason why we shouldn't do well this time, we have some new parts for E21 and the latest developments we have seem to be helping so it will be interesting to see what happens if it doesn't rain. »

?Last year we were running well and it seemed like a good result was possible, but our tires didn?t hold up during the last stint?, remembers the Lotus driver. ?I?m hopeful that we?ll be a little luckier with the performance of the tires this time and well prepared from a strategic point of view. We had race pace in 2012, it's true, but we tried to run on our tires for too long. They fell in performance, and it was over. On the other hand, without trying to push with these kinds of tactics, we would never have fought for the top positions. If we look at last year, we didn?t have a bad car in China, and if we manage to run the car as well as we did on Friday (during free practice, Editor’s note) in Sepang, then we should do well in Shanghai too”, concludes Iceman.