Raikkonen’s errors were infrequent and, when they happened, were usually procedural in nature. That outcome might have been avoided had the team swapped the running order of their drivers, as they had previously done in Raikkonen’s favour on more than one occasion.Īdvert | Become a RaceFans supporter and go ad-free He climbed nine places to finish 11th at the Styrian Grand Prix, and passed both the Ferraris at Spa.Īt the same race he applied such pressure to Giovinazzi that his team mate crashed. There were opportunities when the 2007 world champion was able to show his class. Raikkonen made arguably the start of the season on a damp track in Portugal to run sixth, then again saw a string of rivals breeze past in the DRS zone. Raikkonen ran second at Monza, then the inevitable happenedThis was clear at Monza, where he lined up for the restart in second place (having chivvied his team on the radio to ensure his preferred tyre set was kept warm), but sunk to 13th at the finish as car after car cruised past the Alfa Romeo as if he was towing a caravan. Time and again it was clear the C39 simply wasn’t capable of holding the higher positions even when Raikkonen contrived to take it there. However it’s doubtful that consistently starting a place or two higher up the grid would have made a massive difference to Raikkonen’s season. Raikkonen did have some good Saturdays though, notably at Circuit de Catalunya, where he took advantage of the opportunity to out-qualify one of the Renaults.
Consistently improving team mate Antonio Giovinazzi narrowly won the Saturday contest between the pair and was clearly the quicker by the end of the season.
Qualifying was, again, not the strongest area of his game. Raikkonen took the chequered flag outside the top 10 more often than any other driver: 14 times in the 17-race championship. Unfortunately for him the car, hamstrung by its Ferrari power unit, was seldom capable of delivering points finishes.
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