Kimi Raikkonen remains confident that his 2014 season will take a turn for the better once things finally start falling into place for him.
The Finn has not been comfortable with the F14 T thus far, and has struggled to match Fernando Alonso.
“I’m sure we can improve,” he said. “It’s been a very difficult start so far, but I mean we know most of the reasons, and now it’s just a question to get things the right way and fix them. It’s as simple as that. It sounds very easy, but sometimes it’s difficult to make it. I’m sure we can do much better than we’ve done.”
Raikkonen said a combination of factors led to his frustrating race in China, where he finished eighth, five places behind his team mate.
“I think there was a lot of small things that obviously influenced a lot what happened in the end. I think we could have understood the things much better if we had done the first practice, but then obviously it was wet and it just got difficult because of that. It’s an excuse but that’s how it went, it didn’t work out very well. We got a few points, but not a very good result still.
“I think we know what happened. We would not like to have those weekends, but unfortunately it hasn’t been very straightforward this year. Hopefully we can turn it around and be where we should be. I have no doubt that will will get there, and hopefully soon.”
Asked about the prospects of catching Mercedes he said: “I don’t know. Obviously we try to do the best that we can to improve the car. Every race we improve things, even if it’s a small thing it can make a big difference on handling and stuff like that. The fact is that when you are behind it’s hard to catch up because the others will not stop working, they keep pushing, and they will improve. Certain things that we know we have to improve, it’s not easy to change. We will keep working and try to improve and hopefully at certain points, certain races, we will be able to challenge them.”
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