Spanish Grand Prix – Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen was forced to retire from a potential podium finish on Sunday.
Raikkonen had been running a solid P4 during the race on Sunday, ahead of eventual podium finisher Max Verstappen. While teammate Sebastian Vettel had been ahead on track before opting to make another pitstop as the German struggled to make his tyres last, Raikkonen had no such issues and was quite happy to continue with his planned one stop race.
However, on Lap 26, Raikkonen slowed leaving the chicane and allowed Verstappen through. Trundling down the main straight, he radioed in to say that he had a problem and had lost power. While he managed to do another lap and get back to the pits, he was unable to contine – the Finn forced out with a suspected turbo issue. Raikkonen had been forced to take new power unit components over the weekend. He had an engine failure on Friday, resulting in Ferrari fitting his car with a new engine, turbo and MGU-H for Saturday. Just three of these are permitted for the entire season.
Ferrari are yet to confirm the precise cause of Raikkonen’s failure in the race but, should it prove to be the turbo again, penalties are in store for the Finn during the season as he will be forced to use more than his permitted allowance.
“My race was going pretty ok today, I was in a decent position and the speed was good.” said Raikkonen after his retirement.
“I was running smoothly and saving the tires. Everything could have been alright, but unfortunately it did not happen. At one point I started losing power; I managed to drive around but obviously not at full speed anymore, so I drove back to the garage. We don’t know more than that about the issue we had, we need to take the car back to the factory and check what happened. Looking at the Championship, this result is far from ideal, and I’m pretty disappointed. There is nothing we could have done differently today, but we need to try and keep pushing.”
