4/11/2007

Raikkonen Issues Challenge to McLaren

Ferrari driver Kimi Raikkonen has thrown down the gauntlet and says he's "very optimistic" about this weekend's race in Bahrain:
"We will get a new fresh engine for Bahrain.  That makes me feel very optimistic," he noted.  "As I have always said I am here to race just to win.  When we have our whole package working 100 per cent, we should be back to the same speed as what we had in Melbourne. "Before the season we had a good test in Sakhir circuit. 
For sure, McLaren has improved since that, but at least we should be able to challenge them better than in Sepang. "You never know before the weekend how it goes.  F1 moves on so amazingly quickly and so many things can happen during the race, also.  I just expect that we are in a better shape than we were last Sunday.  The team is doing everything they can to get us back to the winning speed."
I think the Ferrari engine used at Sepang  was more damaged than the team was disclosing. Raikkonen was being very careful until the last laps of the race when he decided to attempt a pass on Hamilton.

Thanks Crash.net and Yahoo.