Kimi Raikkonen kept himself in the World Championship fight by finishing second to Sebastian Vettel in Germany by the narrow margin of 1.008s – but it could have been a victory for the Finn.
The race turned on the final pit stops, and indeed Kimi had the possibility to not actually make one and just carry on to the flag. However he was called in for soft tyres for the final 11-lap run to the flag.
Although he ultimately got passed team mate Romain Grosjean and onto Vettel’s tail, he lost time getting past other cars, and ran out of laps in which to attempt a pass.
“After the Safety Car we were pretty OK and the cars, three of us, had similar speed and it’s very difficult to overtake anybody,” he said. “I could run longer and we had a think about it, if we can try to run until the end but we had a massive problem with the radio. I could hear them, but they could only hear me between two corners.
“So I’m wondering if we should have done it, take a gamble and try to go to the end because the tyres were pretty OK, my speed was pretty OK, so it was hard to know what happens in the next 10 laps. We decided to come in and put the soft tyres. We had good speed. Obviously I got some help from Romain to get past but we would have had a big fight, anyhow. I could have probably passed him in a normal situation but obviously it would have cost me a lot of time.
“I caught up with Seb but, like I said before, everybody was behind each other but we are too close on speeds and it’s so difficult to overtake then. We tried everything that we had and failed to win, but I think for the team we did a good race, and got both cars on the podium, so as a team we’re happy. But obviously I lost some more points to Seb in the championship. We keep trying.”
Kimi insisted that second was better than nothing: “Obviously we are here to try and win races. We couldn’t today because we were not fast enough but for the team it was a good result after a couple of quite difficult races, so obviously for my championship it was not ideal, we lost some more points but it’s still a long season, and if we keep putting ourselves in a position for at least fighting for first place then I think we can do it again. But as I said, it’s good for the team, and not so good for my championship.”
Adam Cooper F1 
Must have decided to err on the side of caution, particularly after what happened at the British GP. I don’t think he could have won in any case.
I thought that was a very honest assessment from Kimi rather than just saying I would have overtaken Vettel easily.