One half of the Ferrari garage was celebrating, as Kimi Räikkönen earned a step on the podium during the thrilling final lap in Austria. Despite getting on the podium, Räikkönen says that he is disappointed by the race result and says that the team expected more.
Räikkönen spent the first portion of the race in second position, chasing down Lewis Hamilton. Of course, he needed to get past Jenson Button first, which took a little longer than the team would have liked. After the first round of pit stops, the Ferrari was trapped behind the Red Bull teammates. He was behind Daniel Ricciardo for more than 30 laps. Starting the final lap, Räikkönen was set to finish in fourth position, just behind Max Verstappen. Thanks to Nico Rosberg’s misfortune in turn two, Räikkönen was able to advance to the bottom step of the podium, overtaking the damaged Mercedes.
Kimi Räikkönen summed up his day at the Red Bull Ring:
“It was not an easy day but I did my best. Third position is an ok result but I’m a bit disappointed with where we ended up: considering the first part of the race, we expected more here as a team. At the beginning we had good speed to catch up a bit with the Mercedes, but then after my pit stop it was not easy to recover. I lost precious time trying to pass Ricciardo, I got close to him many times, but then I was losing traction trying to get out of turn two. Once I got past him I had a very good speed and I was very happy with the handling. In the last part of the race I think I could have passed Max, but with the yellow flags on track it was not possible. Handling-and-speed-wise today we got the maximum out of the car, but it was not enough because we want to be up there with both cars. Hopefully in Silverstone we’ll have a smoother weekend and a better result.”
Maurizio Arrivabene feels that Räikkönen could have been able to pass Verstappen on the final lap to get the second step of the podium, had it not been for Sergio Pérez’s spin into the gravel. “We had split strategies between our drivers and both our data and his feedback showed that he could have come ahead of Verstappen in the last stages of the races, had it not been for the yellow flags which came out following Perez’s crash,” explained Arrivabene.
Things were not as positive on the other side of the Ferrari garage, as Sebastian Vettel suffered a mysterious rear-right tyre failure on the front straight during his 26th lap. The high speed puncture caused the Ferrari to swerve out of control into the barrier. The car was not able to complete the race and the safety car was deployed to allow marshals to clean up the debris. Both Vettel and the mechanics on the pit wall say that there were no signs of an issue. Pirelli will be conducting an investigation into the failure with the cooperation of Ferrari. More updates will be published once they are available.
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