Raikkonen ready to take more risks

[fasteddy]

 Wednesday, August 22nd 2007, 11:16 GMT


Kimi Raikkonen says he will approach the final six races of the season more aggressively, taking more risks in an attempt to increase his wins tally and battle for the championship title.

The Ferrari driver is currently third in the points standings, behind McLaren duo Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton.

But Raikkonen, who is 20 points behind Hamilton, believes he has the advantage of entering the final third of the season care-free compared to his title rivals.

"I will confront these last races in the same spirit I confronted the ones before: I'll try to win and collect as many points as possible and then we will do the maths in the classification," Raikkonen said.

"We have to give our best and hope that those who are ahead of us have slight problems; I don't have much to lose, so I can risk more than my colleagues at McLaren.

"Six races can seem to be only a few, but for the ones who are leading it's a lot. We were able to see that over the last weekend at the Rally of Germany, where Gronholm paid a high price for a bad day."

Raikkonen, who like the rest of the Formula One paddock, returns this weekend after a three-week summer break, said he was optimistic of the upcoming Turkish Grand Prix this weekend and revealed his car will feature a few technical updates.

"I spoke to the technicians and they told me that we have a couple of new developments in the car," Raikkonen said.

"We have to confront the last part of the season, the one in which everything will be decided. There are three races in four weeks, plus a test: this is certain to be a very busy period, but we are racing on tracks, which are amongst my favourites - Istanbul, Monza and Spa-Francorchamps.

"I think that these are tracks where Ferrari should be very competitive: there are no characteristics that are against us.

"The whole team is working together, to try to recuperate the gap in the points: in Maranello they didn't stop working over the last days!"

[fasteddy]

Ferrari: McLaren fight no help to us

By Jonathan Noble and Pablo Elizalde Thursday, August 23rd 2007, 15:56 GMT


Kimi Raikkonen and Felipe Massa doubt Ferrari will benefit from the troubles that McLaren are experiencing with Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton's rivalry.

The competition between McLaren's drivers moved up a notch in Hungary when Alonso held up Hamilton in the pitlane during qualifying.

And although the issues of that weekend resulted in McLaren deciding to hold clear the air talks with their drivers in downtown Istanbul today, rather than face the media at the track, their title rivals doubts that the issues are going to help their own cause.

Raikkonen, who is 20 points behind Hamilton in the title standings, said: "Well, it looks like they have one more day of holiday!"

When asked about his reaction to the meeting taking place away from the circuit, he said: "They have a different system in their meetings; I know exactly what they are doing there.

"We have a system (at Ferrari) where everybody is there together but I know from the past that you can have a meeting with your own people - and it is not as detailed as what we have now.

"For sure it doesn't help the team, but I don't know if it is going to hurt them. But it doesn't make anyone's life easier there."

Massa added: "Actually we don't know exactly what happens. We know it is a big competition between McLaren drivers but there is big competition between every driver.

"We know sometimes people talk too much, and sometimes people write too much so we don't know what is going on.

"If you look from the first race to now, we didn't see a big, big problem looking at the championship because of the fight with the McLaren drivers. So it is difficult to say that."

Raikkonen, who has only six races to make up the ground to Hamilton in the standings, is under no illusions about how difficult it will be for him to win the title, but he has vowed to keep pushing.

"I haven't given up," he said. "For sure it is going to be difficult, but we have been in the same position before ? so it is not a new thing. But one bad race for either of us is going to change a lot. We just keep pushing and we push as long as we can. We just try to win races.

"Lewis is right now further away, so is harder to catch. But we need to try to catch both of them and that is what we try to do."