Kimi Raikkonen: If you don’t win the title you have failed

Kimi Raikkonen says that he has not found the 2014 season with Ferrari particularly frustrating – for the simple reason that he regards any year that doesn’t result in a title as a failure.

The Finn has endured his toughest year ever, and has only made the top six on two occasions.

“I think every season that you don’t win the championship – and I’ve won one – you can more or less forget the rest,” he said in Brazil. “You are here to try to win races and championships, and when you don’t manage to do the championship, you’ve failed every time. Finishing second or 20th makes not much difference. Obviously it’s been a hard year, but for sure we learned things from this year also, and it will help us in the future.

“But it’s not so much fun when you have a difficult race after race. When you have better results obviously it’s more fun for everybody. But that’s how it goes in F1 sometimes. We have to believe our own things, what we do. I’m sure we can get back where we should be and then obviously things will be forgotten.”

Regarding the prospects for next year’s Ferrari he said: “Obviously there are a lot of numbers and things you hear, but it’s the same story with every team, every year. Once we get the car on the circuit then you really know how good it is and how it feels. There are so many things, even little changes, that can have an effect on that.

“They started earlier in the year on the design of the new car, and obviously all of the things we’ve been doing this year they listen to us and make changes on certain things, and try to improve areas that we feel are lacking performance. The fact is we will know exactly how it is at the first test.”