Kimi Raikkonen: “I didn’t really care at that point…”

Kimi Raikkonen endured a nightmare race in Monaco that saw the Ferrari driver lose a potential third place to a puncture he received after being hit by Max Chilton.

He later retired after an incident with Kevin Magnussen during his attempt to recover ground. The Finn received a reprimand from the FIA stewards for the latter.

Kimi’s day started with him missing the driver’s parade, something that can earn a reprimand and/or fine. In the race he jumped up to third at the start only to receive a rear puncture when he was hit by Max Chilton at Mirabeau under the safety car. At the time the lapped cars had been told to pass those ahead in the queue, but Kimi did not realise that the Marussia wanted to get by.

“For some reason he managed to run into my rear tyre and damage it,” said the Finn. “They were unlapping themselves, but I don’t know how he expected to me to go offline in the tight corner. I don’t know what he was thinking, but he destroyed my race at that point, and after that the race was gone. I had a good position, I had a good speed. I got nothing really out of it, but I wasn’t really hopeful.”

During his recovery drive Kimi had a hard time getting past Kamui Kobayashi, but he didn’t have any problem with the way the Japanese driver behaved.

“I don’t think he did anything ,” he said when asked by speed.com if he was unhappy with Kobyashhi. “On the second one we almost came together, because I think he tried to brake late, and lost the rear, and he was going all over the places, I was already trying to overtake him so I was there. We got really close but he didn’t do anything on purpose, he just tried to brake late. That’s how it goes, we didn’t touch, so that’s OK.”

Later he tried to pass Magnussen at the hairpin after the Danish driver had lost some ground with a technical problem. There wasn’t enough room, so the pair slide wide towards the barrier, although they didn’t make contact until Kimi tried to reverse out.

“I tried to overtake on the inside kerb. I just tried to overtake and couldn’t make the corner. He moved a little bit on the left. I went in the end over the kerb. I was pretty close to turn, but the wall was too close, so I had to reverse. I mean I never hit him until I reversed, because he was behind me. But I didn’t really care at that point. Two points, or eighth place, 10th place or 11th, it made no difference to me.

After the race Kimi was called to to the stewards. They accepted his explanation for missing the drivers’ parade, but received a reprimand for the clash with Magnussen. However they had not planned to investigate the Chilton collision until Kimi brought it up. Chilton later received a reprimand.

“Nobody talked about the safety car thing until I asked. They said we don’t know anything about it, and I said how can it be possible/ Then One guy said we haven’t got anything from Charlie, then Charlie said that he told them, but these guys are telling me 10 minutes later that nobody said anything. I don’t know. It’s not very straightforward unfortunately with those things sometimes. Obviously that was the thing that destroyed the race, but they were not very interested in that, obviously. I missed the driver parade because I didn’t feel good, so they made a big story out of that.”