MONZA, Italy — Kimi Raikkonen said he was driving flat out from lights to flag at the Italian Grand Prix and that tyre degradation ultimately cost him a shot at victory.
Raikkonen lost the lead of the race on lap 45 when Lewis Hamilton passed him on the outside of the first corner. The Ferrari driver was struggling with blistering on his left rear tyre at the time after making a relatively early pit stop on lap 20.
His tyre woes were not helped by a series of push laps after his pit stop as he was told to fend off a potential overcut strategy from Hamilton. Is tyres then took more of a beating between lap 31 and lap 36 as he became bottled up behind Hamilton’s teammate Valtteri Bottas, who was left out on track to hold the Ferrari driver up.
« I don’t think it was a set-up problem, but the tyres didn’t last as we hoped, and in the end there wasn’t much left in the rear left, » he said. « Apart from that the car was feeling really good.
« It didn’t help to be behind another car for some laps. You can save a lot on tyres but we weren’t really in a position to start saving, but if you push, you wear them fast and that’s the choice we took.
« We tried but in the end we ran out of tyres, there wasn’t much left at the end of the race — that’s what happened. Obviously it was not ideal but that’s what we got.
Asked if Ferrari pitted him too early, Raikkonen added: « I don’t know. Afterwards you can always fine-tune things but it’s too late.
« I don’t think we did anything wrong but we simply run out of tyres. I don’t know. There’s no point in talking about it. This is what we got and now we move forward. »
http://www.espn.com/f1/story/_/id/24558386/kimi-raikkonen-end-ran-tyres
