“But we know we have to work hard and improve certain areas of the car and I’m
sure we can be up there more often and try to get the win.”
Raikkonen admitted that he didn’t make the most of his one realistic
opportunity to pass Vettel on lap 36.
“We got one try on Sebastian, but I couldn’t use it because I chose the wrong
side and then my tyres dropped off and that was it,” said Raikkonen, a
near-neighbour of Vettel in Switzerland where the Finn, he claims, normally
beats the German at table tennis.
“I pretty much knew that was my only chance.”
Raikkonen said he could have won the race had he not fallen behind the
Ferraris at the start and engaged in a wheel-banging battle with Felipe
Massa.
“We gave ourselves a chance at least and it’s a bit disappointing that we
didn’t manage to do it, but I made a small mistake at the beginning, lost
one place to a Ferrari and I had to re-overtake him and that took a little
time,” he explained.
“I think the team deserves what we achieved now, we have been working hard in
the background and I have not been 100 per cent happy with how the weekends
had gone so far, but we finally got some proper results for the team so it
is an important step.”
Raikkonen said also that he had to battle hard to find a way past his
team-mate Grosjean during the race.
He said: “There are no team orders, we know the rules.
“I tried to get past as quickly as I could, but it is not always easy with two
similar cars so.
“It’s always easy afterwards to say we should have done that, but in the end
we were not fast enough to win so we had to take second.”