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Kimi
Raikkonen believes he is 100% fit for the upcoming Belgian Grand
Prix after a big crash in the third Free Practice at Monza
that left him in pain for the Italian race. The Finn lost control
of the car
under braking and impacted heavily with the barrier then the tyre
wall, and although he emerged unscathed the Ferrari was rather the
worse for wear. Raikkonen had to drive the race the following day
with a very sore neck.
"I
still don't know what exactly happened," he said of how the
crash came about. "I arrived at the Ascari and I braked, when
I was just below 300 km/h: the wheels blocked right on a kerb and
the back of the car
suddenly lost all its downforce, so that the car had a very hard
swerve and I ended up against the wall to my right. There was
absolutely nothing I could have done but waiting for the impact to
happen. The telemetry didn't give any hint on an error or damage,
just like the analysis of the car in Maranello, as the technicians
told me. The impact was very hard, but the consequences, as often
happens in these kind of accidents, I could only feel the next
day; and unfortunately it was the day of the race. My neck really
hurt: we did everything we could to put me back in shape, but
there was not enough time left. This was undeniably the most
painful race I've ever had. It's really difficult to drive when
you can't hold your head up: when I was breaking I had trouble to
see the corners correctly. After a couple of days everything would
have been fine."
Kimi
finished third at Monza,
two places higher than he started but not high enough to satisfy
him. He managed to get in front of McLaren's Lewis Hamilton for
second when Hamilton took his second pit stop, but the British
driver quickly took the position back. Things were worse for Kimi's
teammate Felipe Massa, who retired within a dozen laps with an
unspecified mechanical problem on the rear suspension.
So
Ferrari's home race was not a particularly memorable one this year
and the drivers face increasingly slim chances in the title fight,
but Kimi, naturally, is not about to give up. "We will fight
as long as arithmetic allows us to," he stated. "We
can't leave anything undone. We had a good test at
Spa-Francorchamps last July and I'm 100 percent fit in terms of
physical fitness: after the race I took some painkillers and I
relaxed a bit.""The next one is my preferred circuit.
It's a wonderful place I always l loved to race there and I like
the latest modifications of the track. There are some very fast
and challenging corners, where we could exploit some of the
qualities of the F2007. We'll give it everything to win: I've been
twice on the central step of the podium here at the last two races
and I want to get back there next Sunday!
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