Kimi Raikkonen has downplayed his role as the senior driver at Alfa Romeo.
As the former Sauber team looks to continue their progression through the grid, the Finn’s arrival from Ferrari this season brought much-needed experience to the driver line-up.
His consistent performances have also proven valuable with four points finishes this season, yet the 2007 world champion simply sees it as his job.
“In the end, I’m just the driver, like in any other team,” he said to Crash.net. “As a team, I think we’re not as big as some other teams I’ve been with, but we have the tools.”
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Drawing comparisons to his former team he added: “It’s a bit different because we don’t produce the engines and the gearbox, like in Ferrari.
“If you purely take how many people we are, compared to the big teams, we have less, but if you take the gearbox and engine people out, I think we have quite a lot of people.
“In certain areas, we probably need more but I think the team is still growing up. It’s not many years ago that they were in a pretty bad situation and it’s quite impressive how far they’ve moved forward in a short period of time.
“It’s all learning and I think my position isn’t any different than any other year. Maybe with my experience, I can help them in some areas but I don’t feel less or more important than I was before,” Raikkonen concluded.
The next important stage for Alfa Romeo is to have their second driver Antonio Giovinazzi join Kimi in fighting for the top 10 places, and the Italian does think a big result is just around the corner.
“The good qualifying result with P8 in Baku was exactly what I needed, now it is about to be strong and consistent throughout the whole weekend,” he explained.
“If there are no hiccups with the car, I’m pretty sure that I could score my first points in Barcelona.”