Japanese Grand Prix – Alfa Romeo’s Kimi Raikkonen says he had a thoroughly ‘boring’ day at Suzuka, as he finished outside the points.
It was another poor day at the office for Alfa Romeo and Kimi Raikkonen on Sunday, as neither Alfa seemed to have enough pace to break into the top ten and score some points. Kimi Raikkonen finished in P14, having started the race on the Medium tyre compound. A switch to the Hard tyre on Lap 15 suggested a one stop strategy but, with grip and pace completely lacking, he swapped to the Soft tyre on Lap 36 in an attempt to regain some pace.
While his pace on the Soft tyre was much improved, it was too late to salvage any sort of points finish, and a disconsolate Raikkonen said he had been bored by the race: “Boring day, that’s for sure. I don’t know why really, but the first two stints I just didn’t really have front end – no grip in the car.”
“Then, once I swapped to the Soft tyres, the car was actually pretty nice. I was going something like three or four seconds faster so it was very confusing. Let’s hope we figure it out, we ran the two cars in a different aero package this weekend so hopefully we’ll figure out what is what and we’ll get to where we should be and scoring points.”
Alfa Romeo’s second half of the season has been a bit of a disaster so far, with Raikkonen outside the points since the Hungarian Grand Prix at the start of August. Alfa have only scored a total of three points in the last five races between their two cars, with Antonio Giovinazzi responsible for all three. Alfa are P8 in the Constructor’s Championship, seven points clear of fellow Ferrari customers Haas.
