Kimi Raikkonen has insisted that there is no reason to panic in the wake of
Ferrari's second successive defeat at the hands of arch-rivals McLaren-Mercedes in the 2008
Formula 1 World Championship in the German Grand Prix this weekend.
The emphatic, almost effortless manner of
Lewis Hamilton's pass on Raikkonen's team-mate
Felipe Massa towards the end of the race was symptomatic of the two teams' differing fortunes at this stage of the season, with the Silver Arrows riding the crest of a wave on the back of two consecutive dominant triumphs – and three victories from the last five grands prix to Ferrari's one – and the scarlet machines not seeming to have any kind of answer.
Indeed, defending
F1 World Champion Raikkonen was never really a factor throughout the Hockenheim weekend, not even coming close to threatening the podium as he both started and finished in sixth place – battling with theoretically slower cars throughout and slipping some seven points adrift of Hamilton in the title standings come the chequered flag.
“This was definitely not the kind of race we had been hoping for,” the 27-year-old mused afterwards. “We have struggled all weekend, and we have to try and understand why.
“Usually our race pace is good, but today that was not the case, because I almost always suffered with a lack of grip; only in the final stages did the situation improve a little bit, but it was never enough to be competitive.
“We have a test in
Jerez, where we will try and improve the car so as to arrive in Budapest in better shape. This is definitely not a crisis, but we have to study carefully the handling of the car to understand if we have taken the right road in terms of development.”
“This was not a good day and there's no point denying it,” added a frustrated team principal Stefano Domenicali. “Our rivals were stronger than us and we have to work out why, without however getting caught up in nebulous and superficial analysis.
