Kimi Raikkonen believes his entire Japanese Grand Prix was compromised as a result of damage from the first lap hit with Max Verstappen.
The Finn couldn’t avoid contact as the Red Bull driver recovered to the track after running wide at the final chicane on Lap 1, an incident which earned Max a five-second time penalty.
Raikkonen then struggled with tyre wear and was overhauled by Daniel Ricciardo during the pit-stop phase while Verstappen pulled out enough of a margin to also pit and stay ahead of the Ferrari.
By the checkered flag, the gap between the Australian in fourth as Kimi in fifth would be over 30 seconds.
“After the contact with Max I saw some parts flying off my car; it was damaged pretty badly on the left-hand side,” Raikkonen claimed.
“Obviously, this affected negatively the rest of my race. What happened is unfortunate and after that it was pretty difficult to drive on.
“I had lost a lot of downforce, but there was not much I could do. It’s impossible to know what our performance would have been without that accident at the chicane; we had improved the car over the weekend, it was getting better and better, but unfortunately, this is what we have got today.”
Suzuka marked another bad weekend for the Scuderia with Sebastian Vettel also colliding with Verstappen before recovering to sixth, however, the chance of a first championship since the Constructors’ in 2008 is slipping away.
“It’s been a difficult and poor weekend overall, the result is not ideal,” the ‘Iceman’ added.
“Now we need to look deeply on everything and hopefully we’ll come back at the next race on a more normal situation where we’ll be able to fight.”
