Raikkonen: 'F**k all to do with motivation'

Kimi Raikkonen says his motivation had "f**k all" to do with his lack of competitiveness in the Chinese Grand Prix.

While Fernando Alonso finished on the podium for Ferrari, Raikkonen struggled to eighth place, a minute behind his team-mate. Having admitted the weekend was a tough one for him, Raikkonen was asked how his motivation was during such a difficult race, to which he replied: "I don't know why you always come up with motivation.

"If I were not motivated I wouldn't be here answering this kind of question. It's f**k all to do with that, we have bad races and that's an unfortunate thing but that's how it goes sometimes. Our aim is to improve and get where we want to be."

Asked by Crash.net if Alonso's podium was an encouraging sign that the team was making progress, Raikkonen said the steps forward were obvious internally even if he can't get the car to his liking at present.

"We improved things, we improved things at every race. If we would take from Australia to here we have made a lot of improvements. Obviously sometimes it's hard to see it outside but we know it ourselves and it seems to work. I was pretty happy with the car at the last race; obviously the race didn't go as I planned.

"Here overall, to start with I had some issue so I couldn't run, so that didn't help and then it's just been a difficult weekend. So at least I got a few points, not what we want but for the team it was overall a better weekend and for sure it gives them some good feelings because we've been working hard to improve things. We know that we've improved, not as much as we wanted but obviously that podium for him is a good thing for us."