Kimi Raikkonen has said that he is not interested in looking backwards and examining his torrid 2008 season. The Finn was outshone by his team-mate Felipe Massa for most of the year and was forced to help the Brazilian in the latter part of the season because his own championship challenge had faded. But the 2007 world champion said that he was not dwelling on last season and instead preferred to focus on 2009.
“You always learn from your mistakes, but I’m not particularly interested in understanding last year: we can’t change the way things went, and it doesn’t help us to do things better now,” he told Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera.
“I’m happy to talk about what we can do this year.”
The Finn’s problems reportedly stemmed from set-up difficulties and an inability to warm the front tyres sufficiently. He said that he felt differently about the performance of the new Ferrari F60, however, which he tested last week in Bahrain.
“It was a good first step, everything worked,” he said.
Raikkonen also dropped some cryptic hints as to his future plans in the interview. Speculation has surrounded the man from Espoo ever since he won his first championship, and many observers have questioned his motivation in the past year. He insisted he would remain faithful to Ferrari, however.
“We’ll see whether in two years’ time I’m still enjoying myself or whether I want to do other things,” Raikkonen said. “But what’s certain is that Ferrari will be my last team. Which doesn’t mean that I will definitely quit in 2010…”
