Kimi Raikkonen insists his victory at the United States GP doesn’t suggest Ferrari made the wrong decision to promote Charles Leclerc for 2019.
The 2007 world champion has been driving well all season and finally got the reward of a first win since 2013 in Austin, coming out on top in a battle with Lewis Hamilton.
In just three races time, however, he’ll likely end his stint at the front in Formula 1 as he heads to Sauber taking the place of the Monegasque who heads the other way to Maranello.
“No. For sure I didn’t mean on that side,” he said when asked if his claim he could stay for a “few more years” was in reference to Ferrari.
“I think people don’t understand I’m actually very happy where I’m going.
“I had my time with Ferrari, I won the championship with them. I won many races with them and for me, as a driver, I want different challenges, I want different things and I’m actually very happy to go there [to Sauber].
“It’s roughly 40 minutes from my home. For sure my family will be happy, I’m happy to be with my family. I think it’s probably the best thing.”
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The chance to help his first F1 continue their current resurgence is also appealing to Raikkonen, who admits he has seen it all before.
“I wasn’t really disappointed with the decision [to go to Sauber] at any point. The only thing that I was interested in was to know what was going to happen and that’s the only thing,” he explained.
“The rest, I’ve been long enough in F1 to know that things… it doesn’t matter if you have contracts or not, things happen for different reasons but I think the end result is that I’m very excited about it.”