© FIA

Today, Kimi Räikkönen was guest at the FIA press conference ahead of the Hungarian Grand Prix in Budapest. The Finn talked there about a bearing storry, his chances for the race on Sunday as well as for the championship and a lot more. 

Quesiton: In fact, Kimi, it’s the same with you; this is almost the Finnish home race, isn’t it?

Kimi: Yeah, it’s closest, at least. We usually get a lot of Finnish people here. It’s easy to come and they have lots of different opportunities to come, and it’s always nice to see them.

Question: Now, I keep hearing stories in the press room about a gorilla suit…

Kimi: (Laughs) Yeah, but was it really me? You don’t know. You hear a lot of stories always from the people there, so…

Question: But you won. Are you going to disclaim the win?

Kimi: Yeah, we’ve got the trophy already. It was just a boat race and we just went for fun.

Question: Pole here in 2006, and you won in 2005 from fourth on the grid. What are your chances?

Kimi: I don’t know really, it’s a bit different to many other circuits, probably a bit more like Monaco but I think we have made some progress and we should be stronger than we were in Monaco. If this is closer to that, we could be in a good position, but we will really see tomorrow how the car works here.

Question: What have you been able to change since Monaco, because it was a problem on the twistier circuits.

Kimi: Yeah, but I think it’s… OK, it’s closest to Monaco here but this is still a proper circuit. We’ve got some new parts from the test last week, so I think they are going to help because it’s quite bumpy here and we need to go over the kerbs, so hopefully it helps us.

Question: A question for Kimi. How do you see your chances in the championship? At the moment you are pretty far away and there are not many races to go.

Kimi: Well, I am not any further away than before the last race. We had a bad result but we didn’t get more far away in the points, so… You see like in the last race many things happened and suddenly some people gain many points on the leader and some people not. But there are still many races, so we keep pushing and if we can keep the speed that we have had in the last five races I think still we have every chance.

Question: Kimi, McLaren withdrew Fernando Alonso from this press conference, I can only assume due to the situation between McLaren and Ferrari. Do you think that Ferrari should have had you not participating in this press conference either?

Kimi: I don’t know what the reason is for this, maybe it is something else, so… I was happy to come here. I need to do the same thing either here or out there in the paddock, so for me it doesn’t matter.

Question: Kimi, are you still worried about reliability problems with Ferrari? Or do you think here you are going to solve them once and for all?

Kimi: It is racing and you always can have some problems with the car. That’s a part of it, unfortunately. I think so we understand the problem and we have made some improvements already and we are pretty sure it is not going to happen again. But like I said, you never know. I was happy after Saturday at the qualifying but like I say the race is so long that anything can happen and we couldn’t finish the race unfortunately. So we know we can be fast but it is too early to say, but technically we are pushing to improve the reliability.

Question: Kimi, can you just tell us your reaction last Thursday when the World Motor Sport Council gave their decision? Were you as angry as the rest of the team seem to have been? And similarly what was your reaction this week when you heard the case will go to the court of appeal?

Kimi: I haven’t really followed it too much apart from what I hear from other people and I don’t really want to get involved, so it doesn’t matter if I like it or not. What I think isn’t going to change things, so I just follow what happens and there are people who make decisions. I guess for everything there is a reason, so we will see what happens in the future.

Question: Is there a sense between you and Felipe [Massa] that you want to prove Ferrari on the track rather than everything that is happening off the track?

Kimi: For sure we are going to push as hard as we can to win races and fight for every victory, every point. That’s the only way of racing. We are not waiting to gain some advantage in any other way. That is a completely different story and we keep racing as before. So hopefully we can catch up.

Qustion: Kimi, in a letter from Ron Dennis to the Italian Motorsport Authority today he suggested that the Ferrari was illegal for the first race in Australia.

Kimi: I don’t know anything about the letter at all. So I guess we would have been disqualified if we had been not legal, so probably he was not right.

Question: Gentlemen, what are you planning for the holiday time? Kimi, on the boat probably?

Kimi: I don’t know, I don’t have any plans. For sure something fun, so we’ll see.

Question: Kimi, you said at the Nürburgring that your car being light on fuel was less good than being heavy on fuel. Do you think that compromises your strategy a bit?

Kimi: No, my car was good in qualifying. In the race maybe we didn’t get the tyres working as we wanted. The first two qualifying sessions don’t make much of a difference, the last qualifying is all that counts. We had a perfect car and we had plenty of fuel in the car, so…

Question: Kimi, are you satisfied that Ferrari can now manage the super-soft tyres? Because it seemed in Monaco and Canada that there was some kind of problem with those.

Kimi: I don’t think we had any problem with the tyres, we just weren’t as strong maybe at those races as we have been in some others. We still have been using the soft tyres better than the rest in the last races, so I don’t see that we have had any problems at any point.

Question: Kimi, you have said that you are not too concerned about what is going on behind the scenes. But is it a sort of frustration or annoyance that all this is still going on in the background? And also are you a believer that the race should be won on the racetrack rather than in the courtroom?

Kimi: For sure I think so whatever happens in the coming weeks or months in the championship for sure for everybody it would be nicer to decide it on the circuit. But sometimes there are some other issues that are going to get involved in the whole situation. But I don’t know too much about the whole situation and the details, so I can’t really say anything about it. You hear things, but you hear many different things on the same story, so I just wait and see what happens and keep doing my own thing.