Kimi Raikkonen believes improving the “small things” that hindered him this season will allow him to challenge for victories again in 2018, insisting he still has the motivation to succeed in Formula 1.
The 38-year-old Finn was the only driver of the top three teams not to register a win in 2017, coming closest in Monaco where, after claiming his first pole in nine years, he would lose out to teammate Sebastian Vettel in the race after superior strategy helped the German.
Nevertheless, it was still a disappointing year for the 2007 world champion as he finished 112 points behind Vettel in the Drivers’ standings and 100 points behind countryman Valtteri Bottas, a stat that was crucial in Mercedes’ comfortable retention of the Constructors’ Championship.
But Raikkonen believes that gap exaggerates the actual performance difference he had this year.
“It has been very close with quite a few cars over the races,” he was quoted by F1i.com. “It is small things that count over the race weekends. We need to be faster, more often, and put ourselves in a position and then hopefully some things will go a bit in our direction.
“If it will be easy, everybody could win but it is a lot of things. Small things.”
The Ferrari driver was criticised twice during the year by company Chairman Sergio Marchionne, who called him a “laggard” following the Austrian Grand Prix but then praised him and rewarded him with a new contract for next year after a strong weekend in Hungary.
Considering what else he needs to improve, the ‘Iceman’ also pointed to problems he had at the start of the year with setup and hopes to find a better solution for 2018.
“We started the year a bit slowly,” Raikkonen admitted. “Not really where we should have been. It has been better since then but then we had too many DNF’s and never really recovered from there.
“We had some good moments, but far from what we wanted if you take the whole year. We just need to put things correct for the first race – we have the speed but there are so many things that have to be absolutely right. If you don’t get things perfect, it will cost you a lot of points.”
Undoubtedly, with the next generation of drivers coming through, the pressure is on the most experienced man on the grid to perform with speculation over his future likely to start, but he insists no-one should question his commitment to F1 and his desire to win.
“I wouldn’t be here or next year on the circuit [if] I didn’t have the hunger to win,” he told Motorsport.tv‘s The Flying Lap programme. “So long as that is there, it’s the reason why I’ll give my best.”