Raikkonen on first F1 win since 2013: It’s not a big deal

Kimi Raikkonen says breaking his winless run at the United States Grand Prix “doesn’t change my life one bit” but concedes he does take joy from proving his critics wrong.

The Ferrari driver secured his first win in 113 Formula 1 races – stretching back to the 2013 Australian Grand Prix – with an impressive drive at the Circuit of the Americas having powered into the lead at the first corner before fending off an alternate strategy attack from Lewis Hamilton plus a surging Max Verstappen to claim a popular victory.

The win, his first in Ferrari colours since the 2009 Belgian Grand Prix, plays a key role in keeping both F1 title fights alive in the constructors’ and drivers’ championships but above all Raikkonen says he took most pleasure from proving those who doubted him wrong.

“It’s not a big deal for me, it’s a much bigger deal for a lot of the people,” Raikkonen said. “If it comes, it comes. If it doesn’t, it really doesn’t change my life one bit. I’m happy we are here and that we win but I think the biggest difference is the way people look at you.

“If you look at people in a different way if they win or not, it doesn’t make a lot of difference in my mind. But obviously I’m happy, just proving some people wrong it’s enough fun for me.”

Raikkonen also felt the win was vindication for Ferrari after a challenging stretch of races, having failed to topple Hamilton and Mercedes for four straight races going into the US round, and is hopeful of maintaining his charge in Mexico next weekend.

“I’m happy with how it went, happy for the team,” he said. “We obviously had a pretty rough two races proving people certain things. I might be getting older but it was not too bad, we’ll get a few years more and I enjoyed it.

“We’re here to try to win it and I always try to do it, but it’s not easy, otherwise everybody could do it. I think this weekend we’ve been pretty solid in many ways and I had a good feeling with the car.

“We’ll see what happens in the next race but so far, I’m not complaining. For sure we’ll have fun tonight and then we go next week for the next one.”

Ferrari’s Twitter account also responded succinctly to recent criticms following Raikkonen's win with a post a single emoji:

 

— Scuderia Ferrari (@ScuderiaFerrari) October 21, 2018