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The
short holidays in August for the Formula One teams are over and
tomorrow they all meet in Istanbul for the start of the upcoming
Turkish GP, the twelfth race of the season 2007. This is true also
for Kimi Raikkonen.
"The
holidays are over and they were as I hoped them to be: I enjoyed
the Finnish summer with my family and my best friends," said
Kimi. "We went to the sea, did some motocross, played tennis
and, the most important thing, chilled out. Now I'm ready to get
back on the track."
"We
have to confront the last part of the season, the one in which
everything will be decided. There are three races in four weeks,
plus a test: this is certain to be a very busy period, but we are
racing on tracks, which are amongst my favourites - Istanbul,
Monza and Spa-Francorchamps. I think that these are tracks where
Ferrari should be very competitive: there are no characteristics,
that are against us. The whole team is working together, to try to
recuperate the gap in the points: in Maranello they didn't stop
working over the last days! I spoke to the technicians and they
told me that we have a couple of new developments in the car."
With
two thirds of the championship behind him, Kimi is able to make a
first summary of his experiences at Ferrari: "As I said
immediately after Hungary on the occasion of the Shell event in
Helsinki, there is great harmony inside the team: now I understand
the difference between being a driver for Ferrari as compared to
the other teams. We only concentrate on what we have to do, 100
percent. I will confront these last races in the same spirit I
confronted the ones before: I'll try to win and collect as many
points as possible and then we will do the maths in the
classification."
"We
have to give our best and hope that those who are ahead of us,
have slight problems: I don't have much to lose so I can risk more
than my colleagues at McLaren. Six races can seem to be only a few,
but for the ones who are leading it's a lot. We were able to see
that over the last weekend at the Rally of Germany, where Gronholm
paid a high price for a bad day. We are optimistic for Turkey: I
won the first race ever held here, which gave me a very special
feeling."
"The
track is similar to the one at Silverstone and Spa-Francorchamps,
where the aerodynamic efficiency counts a lot. And then we drive
anti-clockwise: nothing changes in terms of the technics, but the
driver's necks will suffer slightly. Everybody is talking about
turn number 8: it doesn't have the fascination of the Eau Rouge
but is very demanding in it's own way. It is really nice to have
new kinds of fast corners to drive through at the max: everybody
always wants to have more. I can't wait for Friday morning so that
I can drive my laps behind the wheel of my Ferrari!"
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