Kimi Raikkonen’s disastrous tyre strategy

Till the end of Lap 47, it was all looking very good for Kimi Raikkonen. Having qualified a strong 5^th and started 4^th due to Hamilton’s gearbox penalty, Kimi looked good in the early stages of the race running in 4^th. Even after making his second pit stop, he joined behind the two Ferraris and looked set for a good haul of points.

Nine laps from the chequered flag it all started to unfold for Kimi. A few laps earlier, he was running in 4^th with Button, Rosberg and Massa behind him. Button’s 3^rd stop and Massa’s 2^nd put Kimi in clear air and into 2^nd with only Rosberg in front of him but well ahead. So Kimi was leading the long train of cars consisting of Vettel in 3^rd, Button in 4^th, Grosjean in 5^th, Senna in 6^th, Webber in 7^th, Maldonado in 8^th and Hamilton in 9^th running very close together.

Kimi having pitted on Lap 28 and Vettel on Lap 31, their tyres had nothing left in them. On Lap 48, Vettel made a move on Kimi on the outside of Turn 7 and made it stick. Kimi, on the other hand, ran wide onto the discarded rubber and his tyres fell off a cliff – he lost all the grip and fell down to 6^th by the end of that lap. And from then on it was downwards for Kimi as he fell into the clutches of drivers behind him and soon was out of the points scoring positions.

When the chequered flag was waved, he finished way down in 14^th and even behind Felipe who had been able to claw back those 15 seconds which he lost to Kimi while making the pitstop.

Kimi said after the race that they had gambled on stretching the primes for half the race distance but it just didn’t work out for them today.

“We tried to run two stops as it looked to be the fastest strategy and up until the last ten laps it was looking good, but we ran out of tyre performance at the end,” said Raikkonen.

“I was stuck behind Felipe for quite a while and couldn’t get past as I wasn’t fast enough in the right parts of the track to make a move.”

“Even if I’d got past I don’t think it would have made the greatest amount of difference to the final result. We had good pace in the race, we tried a different strategy and it didn’t pay off today; it’s as simple as that.”

You may also like to read:

https://www.sportskeeda.com/2012/04/15/scuderia-ferrari-without-speed-and-traction-you-dont-go-far/

https://www.sportskeeda.com/2012/04/14/fernando-alonso-confident-ferrari-can-fight-for-the-title/