Kimi Raikkonen is not anticipating any situation that will see his race compromised to help Sebastian Vettel during the Malaysian Grand Prix, as the Finn will start second and the German 20th.
The 2007 world champion led the charge for Ferrari after engine trouble saw Vettel unable to set a time in Q1, leaving him at the back of the grid, and he was unfortunate to miss out on pole by less than half a tenth of a second from a resurgent Lewis Hamilton.
With major championship implications likely, some believe the Italian team may look to aid Vettel’s attempted recovery, particularly if Raikkonen could get ahead of the Mercedes but Kimi is rubbishing the idea.
“As a team, we want to get maximum points with two cars,” he said. “Obviously for Seb, he can make a good recovery but it won’t change my race. We want to do the fastest possible race and that won’t change for tomorrow.”
Though Hamilton did claim pole with a remarkable lap, it is still thought Ferrari and indeed Red Bull could have an advantage over the Silver Arrows in long run pace. Raikkonen too is confident of a strong race, providing there’s no repeat of Singapore.
“Tomorrow we will try to go further than 100 metres tomorrow and see what we can do,” he said. “If you made a good start you benefit quite a bit because it’s a long straight. The first few corners are quite tight and a lot of things can happen then.
“We try to make it through the first few corners and go from there. I think we have a very good race car, so we’ll see.”
Earlier this year, the 37-year-old ended a nine-year gap between pole positions as he claimed the honours in Monaco, and the enigmatic ‘Iceman’ admits he had hoped to add another at Sepang on Saturday.
“When you get that close it’s disappointing,” he acknowledged, “I made the most out of it, there are always things to improve but no lap is every 100 percent perfect anywhere.
“You can always find things to improve but I must say the car has been feeling nice here all weekend.”
