World champion
Kimi Raikkonen has admitted that the recent German Grand Prix was one of the more difficult times he has had to endure in his time in
Formula One, with seemingly nothing able to cure a misbehaving
Ferrari.
The Finn had headed to Hockenheim in good heart having shown decent performance in pre-race tests, but almost immediately found his F2008 a different beast as he struggled to match the pace of the two McLarens, and even Ferrari team-mate
Felipe Massa.
"During the tests the week before, the car went pretty well - at least, that was the feeling we got - but, in the race, it seemed as if we were in a different place," Raikkonen lamented, "We never managed to find a good set-up and the car had absolutely no stability. You need good grip to drive good lap times at Hockenheim, but the rear went all over the place for the whole race.
"I left Germany with the same feeling I had many times in the past - that the best thing is that the weekend is over. It was certainly the most difficult weekend of the year - a horrible Friday, an even more complicated Saturday and a very bad Sunday."
Although he has got used to not necessarily matching his title rivals during Saturday's qualifying session, Raikkonen has generally been able to match them - or better - come raceday, but the Finn found that even that was not possible as he chased an evil-handling car for much of the weekend.
"It's true that we had some problems at the beginning of the season to set up the car as I wanted, but we never had problems like we had at Hockenheim. When you're lacking grip in the rear you can't go fast enough to fight for the top positions. For a couple of laps, especially in the end, the situation seemed to improve a bit, but it never went as it should have.
"Usually we have our biggest problems in qualifying, but we're never short on pace in the race - this time, however, we were. The temperatures were slightly higher on Sunday than the days before, but that didn't help either - quite the opposite actually.
