"He has to write 100 times ‘I have to be better in qualifying’,” team boss says after latest disappointment
Tuesday 26 May 2015 15:02, UK
After watching Kimi Raikkonen’s qualifying difficulties continue at the Monaco GP, Ferrari team boss Maurizio Arrivabene joked that he should give the Finn extra “homework”.
Raikkonen started and finished sixth on Sunday after struggling once again with his single-lap performance. In contrast, team-mate Sebastian Vettel qualified third and finished a place higher.
“The problem of Kimi is qualifying, because during the race we saw that, at a certain point of the race, he had the same pace as Seb,” Arrivabene insisted afterwards.
On Saturday, Raikkonen was 0.6s slower than Vettel in the final qualifying session, although he had traffic and backed out of his final ‘flying’ lap.
“Yes, he got some traffic. It’s also true he had a very big gap to the guys in front of him,” Arrivabene continued.
“If he’s going to improve in qualifying, I have no problem for the race because we know Kimi in the races is super and he can do a good job.
“If I have to give him some homework, he has to write 100 times ‘I have to be better in qualifying’.”
Raikkonen, who crashed out of final practice ahead of qualifying, said: “We have to make sure the car’s working, we get things sorted and we don’t have mistakes on Saturday qualifying. All the small details need to be right and I’m sure we can do a better job.
“But for whatever reason, we have had bad Saturdays for a while and hopefully we can change that.”
Don’t miss the F1 Midweek Report for analysis and reaction to the Monaco GP. Natalie Pinkham is joined by F1 journalist Will Buxton and Lotus reserve driver Jolyon Palmer on Wednesday at 8:30pm on Sky Sports F1
