Raikkonen explains front wing issue which forced pit lane start
Kimi Raikkonen believes the issue with his front wing which triggered his late pit lane start penalty for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix wasn’t performance-related as he details an eventful build-up to the race which saw him fight back into the points.
The Finnish driver was excluded from the Azerbaijan GP qualifying results less than three hours before the start of the race as his front wing failed a deflection test which meant he would start from the pit lane rather than his expected eighth place on the grid.
Kimi Raikkonen believes the issue with his front wing which triggered his late pit lane start penalty for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix wasn’t performance-related as he details an eventful build-up to the race which saw him fight back into the points.
The Finnish driver was excluded from the Azerbaijan GP qualifying results less than three hours before the start of the race as his front wing failed a deflection test which meant he would start from the pit lane rather than his expected eighth place on the grid.
Raikkonen says the issue with his Alf Romeo’s front wing had also come up during the Chinese Grand Prix last time out but the team didn’t have the resources to manufacturer a new front wing to ensure the problem didn’t reoccur in Baku.
But during the FIA technical delegate tests in parc ferme conditions after qualifying, the Finn says a similar problem with a front wing strake would have been the most likely cause of his penalty.
“Honestly I don’t know what happened, they messaged me this morning saying it wasn’t legal and we had to change it,” Raikkonen explained. “At the last race the issue I had at the end of the race we had broke a strake on the front wing and we lost downforce. It is probably a similar thing.
“We knew the issue after the last race but we didn’t have time to produce a new one and this is what you get. For sure it doesn’t make you faster but this is what it is. Hopefully it will be fair for everybody after this.”
Despite his setback Raikkonen still climbed up the order to take 10th place for Alfa Romeo, keeping his 100% points-scoring start to 2019, but felt limited by tyre performance having suffered with similar problems to the rest of the Formula 1 field in Baku.
“We didn’t plan to start from the pit lane this morning, but that’s how it turned out to be and we got one point, it’s better than nothing,” he said. “It was difficult, just not enough grip really, I don’t think we really made the tyres work well and got the grip out of it but we did what we could and I assume next race will be easier for us.
“We’ve been getting some points at least, but I don’t think we have got everything out of any of the weekends from the package, so on that side a bit disappointing, but we keep fine tuning things. It’s a young group of people so we need to do things better a little bit here and there and I’m sure it will turn out to be good.”
