Raikkonen shrugs off Ferrari engine blow

Kimi Raikkonen has played down his Ferrari engine issue which curtailed his second free practice session early and isn’t expecting any major changes in the Formula 1 pecking order at the Spanish Grand Prix.

The Finnish driver, who is enjoying a stretch of six podium finishes in the past eight races for Ferrari, dropped down to sixth place on the FP2 timesheet after missing the final third of the afternoon session with an engine problem.

The 2007 F1 world champion was ordered by new race engineer Carlo Santi, who takes over from Dave Greenwood from this weekend, to shut off his engine midway around a lap which saw him coast back to the pits on no power.

With television replays showing Raikkonen’s Ferrari omitting a puff of smoke down and back straight before Turn 10, fears have already turn to a chink of unreliability from the Italian manufacturer but the Finnish driver says the team is yet to understand the full implications of the issue.

“I didn’t feel much, we’ll have to figure out what happened, we have time,” Raikkonen said. “But it’s okay, it’s Friday, not a major deal.

“Today it looked pretty close but it’s hard to say. It’s like in every race, it’s difficult to say it from Friday because some people try a lot of things. Tomorrow morning we might get a better idea. I would expect everything should be pretty similar to what it was in the first four races.”

Raikkonen sits third in the F1 drivers’ championship after taking three podiums from the first four races to see the Finn produce his best start to a season since 2013.