After losing 9th place at Imola because of a penalty for a race restart infringement, 2007 World Champion Kimi Raikkonen got off the mark in 2021 with a P10 finish at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. It meant Alfa Romeo scored a point for a second consecutive race.  

Asked if he was happy to be back in the top 10, Raikkonen would have liked a bit more. 

''Yeah... but I guess you could always hope for a bit more,’’ he said. 

At the standing restart, Raikkonen was 11th. Hamilton’s mistake promoted him a place as he repassed teammate Giovinazzi in T2 after the Italian touched the back of Ricciardo’s McLaren. The Finn brought it home to collect a point following those hectic final two laps.  

''It was a little bit hectic the last restart and I had to avoid somebody. We’ll take the one point,’’ Raikkonen said. 

Apart from the wild final two laps, the Finnish driver admitted his race had been pretty quiet until that point as he ran outside the points for almost the whole race. 

''Honestly, not much happened in the race,’’ he added.  

''We stopped a bit later [than the others], we had good tyres and we were catching up a bit the cars in front. I think it’s surprisingly difficult for people to overtake here. 

''We’ll take what we got and hopefully the next race we can be a bit better,’’ he concluded. 

Alfa Romeo’s Xevi Pujolar’s commented on Raikkonen’s performance at the weekend when asked by MotorLat on Sunday about the Finn’s struggles in qualifying against Giovinazzi towards the end of 2020 and the early part of 2021.  

''Yesterday in qualifying, Kimi was okay. We didn't have enough soft tyres [in Q2] because of the red flags; we used everything in Q1 [and] Kimi did a reasonable Q2. I think his performance was okay in qualifying and in the race he was strong in the middle stint as well. He was well-positioned.’’  

 

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by Kimi Räikkönen (@kimimatiasraikkonen)