Two days after his emphatic victory at Sepang, Kimi Raikkonen is still clearly on cloud nine, having finally got his title defence underway.

"Obviously it's great to win again," says the Finn. "I had a really good feeling flying back home on Sunday evening. The race went exactly according to our plans.

"When we don't have any problems, we know that we're fast and that we can win," he continues. "This is what happened in Malaysia. That should have happened also in Australia, but in Melbourne we had one of those weekends when nothing goes right.

"Again in Sepang at the beginning it didn't go too well for us," he admits. "We almost lost the whole first Free Practice session, when I ran out of fuel. But that was due to a mistake of the team and not a technical problem. Qualifying could have gone better, but in the end what counts is the race, which was almost perfect from the first to the last lap. I had a really good start and if I had pushed to the limit I might have even taken over the lead at the first corner. With Felipe we knew each others fuel levels so there was really no point in fighting with my teammate. I preferred to wait for the pitstop.

"It's pretty difficult to stay behind another car, but I had to stay close enough to make my game on this single lap after Felipe went in for his stop. It's really a huge difference when you can drive with no other car in front of you. Without looking at the details I think that the car was immediately half a second faster. I could get back in the race ahead of my teammate and I could see him falling slightly behind. I knew that I was going to win the race as long as there weren't any problems. All in all it was an easy victory. Once the situation was stable, we thought about bringing the car back home. I could have gone much faster though.

"I won my first ever Grand Prix in Malaysia," adds the 2007 champion. "And also back then it was a pretty easy win. This shows that when the car is set up well, Sepang is a circuit made for me.

"I was asked if our season started in Malaysia. This is not the case, because we made one point in Melbourne. We fought and we picked up one point, which is always good to have. The team really knew how to take the race in Sepang. They didn't start to panic after the bad race weekend in Australia. And I know that they won't be carried away by their enthusiasm after this success.

"This is going to be a very hard fight for the title," he admits. "We have to improve in Qualifying. When you're strong on Saturday, it helps a lot on Sunday.

"It's nice to be back home, where it's a bit cooler. It was really hot in Australia and Malaysia. And it will be hot again in Bahrain. But that will not be a big problem after two weeks with really high temperatures."