Slow start at Suzuka for Kimi Raikkonen

NEW DELHI: They call him the Iceman and he's returning to Suzuka after a gap of three year. It was not the perfect start that Kimi Raikkonen was hoping for on his return for the Japanese Grand Prix, only managing to clock the 14th fastest time with the Lotus team.
The former World Champion agreed that this was not the ideal start to the weekend. "We didn't get much running in FP2 because of the issue with the KERS, but at least it happened today and we got it fixed.It's not ideal when we're searching for the best setup but there's nothing you can do about these things. Suzuka is not the easiest place to get the car set up, but we still have tomorrow's practice before qualifying," Raikkonen said after clocking 1:34.291, a good two second behind leader Mark Webber of Red Bull.
Raikkonen is currently third in the Driver's Championship so far, only 16 points behind Sebastian Vettel of Red Bull. "The car doesn't feel too bad. We have to fix certain things but it's not as if there's something wrong; we just have to dial out a bit of understeer so it's certainly not a disaster. We changed a few things at the end of the afternoon session but unfortunately didn't have enough time to get a good feel what difference it made. Hopefully we can everything together tomorrow," he said about the Lotus car.
On returning to Suzuka, Raikkonen said, "I enjoying driving here; it's a challenging place to find the speed. It's quite difficult to get a good lap; so much depends on the car and getting into a good rhythm, but that's part of the enjoyment of Suzuka. It's been a tricky day today, but I think we have the potential to be nearer the front than we have in the last couple of races so let's see what we can do in qualifying."