Adam Cooper F1

Ferrari boss Maurizio Arrivabene insists that Kimi Raikkonen can deliver this season – but he has to feel that he has the full support of the Italian team.

The Finn finished fourth in China after passing both Williams drivers on the first lap, and he was running close behind team mate Sebastian Vettel when the safety car emerged.

“They have different characters.” Arrivabene said of his drivers. “Seb is a kind of strong guy, very committed, etc. Kimi, he needs to feel the support of the team around him, and especially the team principal. I mean in Malaysia I was talking with him after the practice, and he knows me, we’ve known each other since many, many years. I said, ‘Kimi, if you’re attacking for nothing, expect me to react.’

“But Kimi likes this kind of relationship, when you talk with him straight into the face. He’s called Iceman, but actually apart from this image of Iceman he’s a guy who is very sensitive. If he feels that the team is around him and is pushing for him as it’s pushing for Seb, then Kimi can give us very good results and perfect performances.

“The race in Malaysia, I mean we were jumping like kangaroos – even if it was Malaysia not Australia – for the victory, but actually if you look back and look at the race of Kimi it was wonderful. The new news in Ferrari is that we have a team now, and we have two drivers, two very good drivers.”

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff has moved quickly to defuse tension in the camp in China after Nico Rosberg accused Lewis Hamilton of making his life difficult by backing him up and allowing Sebastian Vettel to stay on his tail.

Wolff said that after the matter was discussed in a team meeting the drivers understood the situation more clearly.

“It was a good debrief, because it was a positive debrief,” he said. “There wasn’t any animosity. There is much more positive today. We didn’t do any mistake in the race. Everybody was in good spirits.”

Wolff insisted that the main issue was that Hamilton wasn’t sure how the option tyres would play out over the second stint, and thus in effect kept something in reserve. The team had planned to put the prime on at the first stop, but the strategy was changed.

“Lewis was the car in the lead, he was controlling the pace. We were putting the option tyre on, although we were actually expecting to put the prime on, so our expected race would have been option-prime-prime. Also because we learned the lesson from Malaysia, we thought we might run into trouble with the option. And then we found out that our option was actually holding on much better than we expected, and much better than Ferrari.

“We tried to make sure that we could cover Ferrari with the option. We put the option on, the driver realises he has the option in, doesn’t know what’s going on behind him, and controls his pace, because he needs to take the option longer than expected. And he was controlling that pace. From his point of view, completely understandable.

“Nico on the other side was really running into trouble, because he was bunched up behind Lewis, he couldn’t go any more near, so he asked for a 2secs gap to Lewis so he could at least protect the tyres a little bit, which he did. And on the same time Sebastian was increasing the pace behind him. So understandable from both of them.”

Wolff was adamant that Lewis had not tried to handicap his team mate.

“I think he didn’t do it on purpose, and we’ve cleared that now. There wasn’t any intention from Lewis to slow Nico down in order to make him finish third or worse, one hundred per cent. He didn’t know the gaps behind Nico. What he knew was that he needed to take the tyre longer than we’ve ever run it the whole weekend, and this is why he decided to slow down in the way he did.

“Now after a while we realised after a while that this was putting us into trouble, putting Nico into trouble, risking the second place – or even worse, if Lewis has a DNF you could potentially lose the race as Mercedes, so there were lots of thoughts on the pit wall about the possible consequences. And he didn’t know that. So I think you can’t really blame anybody.

“You cannot take the DNA off a racing driver and expect him not to look after himself, which he did. Whether it was in the back of his mind, and he saw the Ferraris in the mirrors, and he thought that was interesting… But I don’t really think that was the case. He didn’t know how long the tyres would last, and this is why he decided to manage the gap the way he did. When we came on the radio it was the moment to act. Then he increased the pace, and as a remedy we pitted Nico first, which normally we wouldn’t have done, to take him out of trouble.”

Nico Rosberg says that tyre degradation at Mercedes will be the key to the Chinese GP – but adds that will open up an opportunity for him to beat pole man Lewis Hamilton.

“I’m going for the fight, for sure,” he said tonight. “That’s what I’m going to do tomorrow, definitely. I’ve got the car to do it, I prepared well for the race on Friday, I’m comfortable with driving the car on high fuel.

“It’s going to be a very challenging race, because we have the option tyre to start off with, and that’s going to fall apart at some point, quite dramatically, so there’s going to be a lot going on at that point in time in the race, and there the Ferraris who might be able to go longer than us, as we’ve seen in Malaysia.”

Rosberg is pleased that things could be mixed up a bit: “So I wonder how that will then play with the strategy and everything. Even the prime tyre, it’s going to be on the edge. So tyre degradation wise it’s going to be an interesting race for us, and plenty of opportunities also, and that’s a great thing.

“There’s been a race like Melbourne where there was no opportunity. I was very, very close, but the strategy, there was just one, there was no tyre degradation, so there was just no opportunity for me to take. Here tomorrow there’s many opportunities, and that’s a very good thing.”

Lewis Hamilton continues to struggle with an overheating backside due to unexpectedly high temperatures in the Mercedes cockpit.

However he insisted today that it wouldn’t slow him down if he’s leading the race tomorrow.

“If you are winning you can do anything!,” he joked. “I don’t know what it is. Sometimes you have heat coming in – you have hydraulics in the car and sometimes your ankles and feet start getting very warm in some races. Sometimes with the tubes that come into the cockpit or wires that come into the cockpit there’s heat [that] comes through them.

“So there will be a small leak somewhere. They’ve been patching it up, and also I changed the seat, which has less insulation or less heat protection on. I’m sure they’ll do everything. But yesterday was kind of warm. It doesn’t burn through the overalls but your butt’s pretty hot! It felt like you’d had a real whoopin’, that’s all I can compare it to.”

Meanwhile team boss Toto Wolff added: “There is an electronic box below his bum, so it’s either that or the engine itself. We changed the seat, we put more insulation between the seat and the chassis, and hoped the problem is solved. It’s not solved yet.”

Nico Rosberg admits he’s concerned about how split strategies at Mercedes could impact his battle with Lewis Hamilton.

Until now the team has tried to be fair to both drivers by usually running near identical strategies, but after losing out to Ferrari in Malaysia Toto Wolff admitted that it was time for a rethink.

Rosberg said that while it could work both ways he’d prefer it didn’t have to happen.

“Last year I was the guy in front in Hungary and I ended up having the little bit worse strategy,” he said. “You do that because the strategies are really close and you’re not sure which strategy is the better one. Definitely I don’t like that personally, because it’s an artificial addition to our fight, it’s not a fair fight after that for one or the other. So I don’t like that.

“But that’s the way it is, we’re racing for Mercedes and in the first instance we need to win for Mercedes. Whenever they need to do that they will do it and it’s clear for us, so we accept that to make sure that we win. In Malaysia we would have had a better chance to win if we split the strategies, definitely, because I was completely compromised by that one. That’s just an example of where you need to split strategies as a team.”

Asked by this writer for his views Hamilton said: “I haven’t got any worries just yet. Ultimately the car in front gets the best strategy, so I put myself in the best position for that, hopefully.”

Daniel Ricciardo was in upbeat mood today after finishing FP2 in third place, behind Lewis Hamilton and Kimi Raikkonen.

The Aussie said that the latest updates had improved the hitherto disappointing RB11, and it felt better to drive.

“It was definitely a positive day for us, we did more laps and [had] more understanding with those laps,” he said. “I think on both tyres, also on short and long runs, we’re pretty happy. New parts on the car, they all seemed to work as hoped.

“I definitely feel more confident, even my satisfaction when driving the car this afternoon. I felt the grip and I really feel the improvement, so that’s always nice, to feel that as well from the driver’s side, not only the lap time. I’m positive that it can be good weekend.”

Regarding Ferrari’s form he said: “They always seem to come on a bit stronger on Saturdays, but for now we seem to third best team, and we’ll try at least to hold that.”

Plans for teams to be allowed a fifth engine for each driver in 2015 remain in limbo pending a formal proposal from the engine manufacturers.

Although team bosses agreed in principle to the idea in Malaysia – on the basis that it will be necessary to encourage teams to run on Fridays rather than save mileage – it has not yet been formally presented to the FIA.

“My understanding from the meeting is that a proposal will be put together by the engine manufacturers,” Force India’s Bob Fernley told this writer. “And once we get that it will go to the next strategy group meeting in the middle of May.

“To me it doesn’t matter either way, whether they fast track it through or it goes through the strategy group and follow the process. The important thing is that we are being proactive and not reactive. It’s about addressing a potential problem that’s not even there at the moment. What we want to make sure is that towards the end of the season there isn’t any issue, as long as it’s sorted out mid-way through the year.”

Fernley is adamant that n extra engine should only be available for Friday running: “The proposal was very clear, it was to ensure that the fans have good value on Fridays in terms of the amount of running they see. Therefore we’re dealing with Fridays and not a full weekend. I suspect that part of the proposal is that it is limited to Friday in terms of running.”

Fernley made it clear that teams won’t be obliged to take a fifth engine, and the situation is complicated by the extra cost to customers.

“The manufacturers are looking at how they can support it. The answer is really to wait until their proposal is out, and only then can we judge fairly what people are looking for.”

Sebastian Vettel is keeping his feet on the ground about prospects for the rest of the season despite the huge boost that his Malaysian GP victory gave Ferrari.

Everyone is eager to see if the Italian team will have the speed with which to challenge Mercedes at other circuits.

“I think we are realistic about where we are and what we want to achieve,” he said in China today. “I think the targets haven’t changed. Obviously it was a great victory we had in Malaysia and great for us as a team, and especially for myself a very emotional day – my first win with Ferrari. And then coming back to the factory and to see all the people there was quite special. There are a lot of people working there, so you can imagine, and of course they were very, very happy.

“The team hasn’t won for quite a while, so I think they enjoyed the fact that they had something to celebrate, there are a couple of rituals involved and it was nice for them to get that feeling again, but as I said, for the next races nothing has changed: we want to confirm that we have a strong package, we have a strong car and we want to make sure that we stay ahead of the people we stayed of in the last couple of races, but knowing that obviously Mercedes is in a very, very strong position.”

Asked if the Malaysian pace was “for real” he said: “I think it was for real two weeks ago. I don’t think Mercedes backed off, and everyone else. It was obviously nice for us to see that we were so competitive but I think there were also a couple of circumstances coming together but most important we managed to capitalise and get a very good result and win the race.

“But for here and for the next races, I think in general [at] the start of the season, things can be up and down. We want to make sure that there is quite a lot of up, not so many downs but it’s normal that some races you are more competitive than others, so I think, as I said, that we managed to do a very good job in Malaysia but for here and for the next races we have to be realistic about what we want to achieve.”

Vettel made some interesting observations about the celebrations in Maranello.

“I was there anyway to do some work. It was planned [for me] to come on the Wednesday to be in the simulator. but obviously it was also quite nice to receive a bit of a welcome after the win. All the factory got together for a quick lunch which was quite nice, to have all the people in one room – it was a big room – all together and able to celebrate a little bit.

“Also I learned that when you win with Ferrari, they put a Ferrari flag right at the entry gates. Obviously the last couple of years… it has been a long time since there has been a flag. I think some ten years ago there were a lot of flags, especially at the end of the season, so this flag will stay for the rest of the year. We will of course try to maybe put another one sometime soon, but it’s tough right now.”