Kimi Raikkonen is targeting a much stronger title challenge in 2018 with Ferrari after seeing this season compromised by a lack of confidence with the car and retirements.
The Finn has been under pressure at different stages for his performances with President Sergio Marchionne even calling him a “laggard” after the Austrian Grand Prix but that all changed following the Scuderia’s one-two in Hungary and the 2007 world champion was re-signed for another year.
Raikkonen has shown glimpses of his best too notably his pole in Monaco, even if he was overhauled by Vettel in the race, but it has been the feeling that the ‘Iceman’ is now a number two to his teammate which have left many to wonder if he is capable of winning regularly and adding a second title to his name.
The man himself, however, has no such doubts believing other issues have compromised his pace in 2017.
“Obviously I want to be fighting at the front, every weekend, to be able to fight for the championship next year,” he said on Thursday, stating his ambitions for next year.
“We started this year pretty badly, we were not where we should have been. Personally, on my side, I was not very happy with the set-up and it took quite a long time to figure it out. Since then it has been better, but we’ve also had too many DNF for different reasons.”
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Raikkonen is also confident Ferrari is already in a position to meet his target and will be even stronger having learnt the lessons for the problems faced in the second half of the season.
“As a team we’ve come a long way from year to year, even from last year we’ve done a good step to get where we want,” he claimed. “What we want is for Ferrari to win both championships, but I think we have the right tools to do it.
“Next year we need tidy up things and not make mistakes and then we should be OK. It’s the small things, here and there, that have played a big part this year.
“In the end we have a great car, great tools, now there are two races to go and we’ll try to make the most out of them,” Kimi added, “doing the same work we’ve been doing in the last few races and then, next year, we start from zero next year and we move forward.”