Kimi Raikkonen was forced to complete the final few laps of the Canadian Grand Prix with little or no braking, the Finn has revealed.
The Ferrari driver was pushing to catch the three-way battle for the final podium place, as the Scuderia switched to a two-stop strategy in trying to make up for a disappointing first half of the race.
Instead, at maybe the toughest race of the year on brakes, Raikkonen missed the last chicane gifting a position to Sebastian Vettel behind and was forced to simply make it to the finish.
Reflecting on the early part of the race, the 37-year-old commented: “I didn’t have the greatest of starts and I had a big moment on the second lap or something in Turn 8, luckily I didn’t touch the wall and it was difficult to pass.
On the mid-race switch to back to the ultrasoft tyre, he added: “We decided to do something different and after that, we had very good speed, once we were on our own.
“We had just caught up with the guys in front but then I had a brake failure, so, unfortunately, it was just a case of finish the race.
“We all knew it was going to be quite on the limit on many things today because of the conditions and here it’s never easy on the brakes for any of us.”
Raikkonen was confident in Ferrari’s strategy call, which team-mate Vettel would vindicate by eventually finished fourth.
“I think we had the speed, in the end, to challenge them because that’s what we were trying to do by being offset on the tyre life and the speed difference,” he explained.
“Because we could have easily stayed in the position we were in before the stop and then see what happens.
“I think we all we were going to give ourselves a bigger chance by stopping and having better tyres, but then we had issues.
“I had no brakes, I was just lifting. You could press the brakes and it would slow the car just a little but if you tried to press it any harder you had zero brakes.”
