Raikkonen determined to bounce back

Lotus driver looks to put behind last year’s horror show at Monaco GP.

Lotus driver Kimi Raikkonen endured a torrid time at Monaco GP in 2012 and is determined to bounce back on the challenging track next weekend.

The Finn lost practice time after changing the steering setup and struggled to get up to speed in last year’s race. Currently second in the championship, he hopes to have a better race this time around than he enjoyed last year.

“We’re not in first place, so we can’t be too happy,” he said of his season so far. “For sure it’s not a nightmare, but we’ve still got a lot of races yet to come, and anything can happen in Formula One. Monaco’s a different challenge, so we’ll have to see what happens there this year.

“We certainly won’t make the mistakes we made last time. There were a few things we didn’t do right and we suffered because of that. Sometimes that’s the way it goes, but the important thing is not to make the same mistakes again.

Raikkonen reiterated that qualifying will be the key, according to Autoweek.com.

“We have to focus on qualifying. We’ll have to see how the tires perform and if there are any good strategies to be made, but the most important thing is to qualify well.

“We can say our car has been fast everywhere else, so let’s hope it’s also fast there. We’ll do the best we can.”

‘McLaren can make small step forward in Monaco’

Meanwhile, Jenson Button is ‘confident’ McLaren can make another ‘small step forward’ in Monaco.

Despite introducing a number of new updates in Spain last weekend, the Woking-based outfit still struggled.

“Everyone at McLaren has been working flat-out since the Spanish Grand Prix,” he said. “We’re not yet where we want to be in terms of competitiveness, but I’m confident that we can make another small step forward in Monaco.

“We’ll continue to chip away at the performance of the MP4-28 until it’s capable of challenging at the front; there’s no other agenda for a winning team like McLaren. The aim for Monaco is to get both cars home in the points, as we did in Barcelona.”

Published in The Express Tribune, May 19^th, 2013.