28/08/2017
NEWS STORY
Kimi Raikkonen believes the 10s stop and go penalty meted out for not slowing under the waved double yellows following Max Verstappen's retirement was not warranted.
He served the penalty shortly after making his regular pit stop, dropping to seventh in the process.
Though the stewards deemed that the Finn made no attempt to reduce his speed, Raikkonen disagrees.
"I didn't go faster but I didn't lift on the straight," he admitted. "In my view it was pointless to get penalised for that.
"I completely understand if he was by the side of the circuit, on the proper side and there is people working on it," he added. "But this is what happened and I would be surprised if everybody else lifted. Luckily there was a safety car and we could recover something, but it was not the easiest end of the weekend but it's what happened."
Indeed, while the re-start saw him lose out to Daniel Ricciardo in an audacious move, Raikkonen was at least able to slip ahead of countryman Valtteri Bottas in the same manoeuvre.
"On the restart I got a really good tow from two cars and then Ricciardo was on one side," he said, "Bottas was in the middle and I just had just enough speed to get next to Bottas, and I managed to go on the inside. I got one car... after that I never really had the speed advantage over the Red Bull. They were surprisingly strong in race conditions compared to what they have been the whole weekend. They had good speed in the right places always and good lap times but at least I got one place back."
To add to his woes Raikkonen was also handed 3 penalty points, his first in the 12 month period.
Check out our Sunday gallery from Spa, here.