26/04/2018
NEWS STORY
Though he made it to the podium in China, few would agree that it was despite the best efforts of his team.
Quickest for much of the weekend, and only just missing out on pole position, many were angered by Ferrari's strategy during the Chinese Grand Prix which appeared to leave Kimi Raikkonen out unnecessarily long on his opening stint dropping the Finn from fourth to sixth and thereby seemingly out of contention.
However, the safety car which worked so well for the Red Bull duo, ironically also played into Raikkonen's hands, allowing the Finn to fight his way back to third place, while his teammate, finished a distant eighth.
Asked if he felt he was being treated equal to his teammate, Raikkonen was keen to play down media speculation, insisting that as far as he is concerned, all is well.
"It's one of those things," he told reporters, "it's always easy after the race to say what we should have done. Once you know the final result it's easy to say this and that, but no one knows it during the races.
"You try to do the best you can, sometimes it's OK, sometimes it's not," he continued, "but that's normal in any racing conditions. As far as I know I have 100 percent the same chances as everybody else, we try to make the best out of it. I'm here to do my best and I want to fight as hard as I can. I wouldn't be here if I wouldn't feel that's possible."
Despite qualifying second at every race thus far, Raikkonen trails his teammate by 24 points, having scored two thirds and retired in Bahrain following that infamous pit stop.
"For sure we could have done better but this is what we've got right now," said the Finn. "I think speed-wise we've been pretty OK, so we need to make sure we take the maximum points we can and have no issues. I think we've improved the car since the tests, but I don't think that it has massively changed and suddenly there is more of this or that. I think we are both pretty happy with things.
"For sure, there are always things we can improve, but that's the never-ending story in F1. It's not too bad, we've been pretty fast and for sure we try to improve here and there. The set-up then is to make it better for each driver, but they are small things that can make a difference."
Asked if in China, specifically, he felt his strategy was compromised in order to help Vettel, he said: "I don't know. For sure, it was probably not ideal but the safety car helped and the end result was OK. It depends which way you look, I got third, obviously I want more, the team wants more, but it could have been a lot worse."
Check out our Thursday gallery from Baku, here.