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Kimi
Raikkonen is convinced Ferrari will win races this season after
the team's promising performance at the Monaco Grand Prix. The
Italian squad endured a dismal start to the year, but seems to
have turned the corner following the introduction of an upgrade
package in Spain.
Raikkonen
scored the team's first podium of the season in Monaco, with
Felipe Massa coming home in fourth to complete Ferrari's strongest
outing of the year. Now the Finnish driver, who was disappointed
with third position, reckons it's just a matter of time before
Ferrari wins again.
"I
wasn't too happy with the third place at the Monaco GP. For sure
it was the best result of the last times, but that was nothing new
to me and we knew that we could arrive on a place on the top,"
said Raikkonen. "When the leaders in the championship are so
far ahead in the classification, in the end it's only a victory
that counts. Being back on the podium is a nice reward for the
whole team. The hard work of the last weeks finally bears some
fruit, which is really positive for all of us. We know that we're
on the right way now: there are still some minor things to be done
but sooner or later we will win. We'll show up with further
improvements of the F60 in the upcoming races and we hope we can
then challenge the leaders even more, in the qualifying and in the
race."
Raikkonen,
who started the race from second place, felt missing out on pole
position was a big handicap for him.
"The
Monaco qualifying is so much more important than on other tracks
and we've almost done a perfect job: we missed the pole by 25
thousandths of a second. Not starting from the first position
means that it's very likely you won't win. Furthermore the second
position on the grid doesn't help on this track. You start from
the dirty side of the track and whenever I found myself in this
position I always lost at least one position in the field, because
the tyres spin a lot at the start. In fact Rubens overtook me,
which was really a shame. If I had managed to stay behind Button I
think I could have easily opened a gap. In the end it was
difficult to fight for second position and then there was this
story at the last pitstop, where we lost a couple of seconds, due
to a problem with the right rear wheel. When I took up the race
again I was further behind the Brazilian than before. We brought
home both cars and gained some important points. There were many
things at Monaco we can be satisfied with."
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