Raikkonen to stick with short wheelbase

Kimi Raikkonen is to stick with the short wheelbase version of the Lotus E21 for next weekend's United States Grand Prix at the Circuit of the Americas.

Raikkonen elected to go back to the shorter version of the car in Abu Dhabi having struggled to match the results of team-mate Romain Grosjean in recent races.

The Finn enjoyed his best qualifying result for some time at Yas Marina before being demoted to the back of the grid for a technical infringement, with his race then ending early following a clash on track with Giedo van der Garde's Caterham at turn one.

While that meant he failed to finish the race, Raikkonen said the Abu Dhabi weekend had been enough to show that the shorter wheelbase car was better suited to his needs, with the decision taken to now continue running it in the penultimate race of the year.

"It has a better feeling for me and seems to make it easier for me to get more of what I want from the car," the Finn explained. "We've been trying to get rid of understeer to get the car more as I want it and the shorter car helps with this."

On the back of his disappointing result in Abu Dhabi, Raikkonen added that he was now keen to try and return to form when he hits the track in Texas.

"[Abu Dhabi] wasn't the longest race I've been in; certainly not as good as my 2012 race there either," he said. "Obviously it wasn't ideal, but that's the way things go sometimes. We should have a much longer race in Austin.

"The car has been feeling pretty good and we've seen some good races this year. We won't know how good it is in Austin until we're out on track, but we're certainly pushing for a good result."

While Raikkonen will continue to now run the short wheelbase car, team-mate Romain Grosjean will continue to use the long wheelbase version, although trackside operations engineer Alan Permane said it wouldn't cause the team any issues.

"Certainly if we'd started the season trying to learn the car and the latest specification of tyres with different configuration chassis it would have been more of a challenge," he said, "but this late in the year we are far more able to accommodate this approach to give both of our drivers what they want from their cars in qualifying on Saturday and in the race on Sunday."