“He was pissed off and tried to play games”- Kimi Raikkonen on Carlos Sainz

“He was pissed off and tried to play games”- Kimi Raikkonen opens about his controversial face-off with Carlos Sainz in Bahrain.

Kimi Raikkonen and Carlos Sainz were involved in a heated collision during the last test session in Bahrain, where the Iceman appeared next to Sainz, and the Spaniard didn’t take it well.

Speaking on it, Raikkonen pleads innocence and even is unaware of the contact they made after Sainz turned onto his Alfa Romeo. But, he was sure that the 26-year-old driver was pissed off.

“I don’t think we touched, and I don’t know,” Raikkonen said. “I had zero ideas that he was there, and then I saw him at the last minute, and I pulled right. But I don’t know.”

“I guess he was pissed off and tried to play games. Anyhow, I doubt that we even touched. I didn’t feel it,” Raikkonen added. The Finn driver ended the final day of pre-season testing with the highest individual lap count of any driver, racking up 166 laps.

He closed on the testing with the fourth-fastest time on the grid, giving a positive start to Alfa Romeo, indicating that the team has made substantial progress from 2020.

Hesitance in acceptance of the improvement

Raikkonen doesn’t want to jinx his side’s chances of a better year, as he says that it was only the testing, and the real performances are required during the season.

“It’s only testing, so you never know what the others are doing, but purely for feeling, for sure it’s better than it was last year,” Raikkonen said.

“Faster, I guess, than we were at the end of the year. As we said, it’s testing, and I think the feeling with the car is a bit better. We’ll see in a few weeks where we end up,” he concluded.

About the author

Tanish Chachra

Tanish Chachra is the Motorsport editor at The SportsRush. He saw his first race when F1 visited India in 2011, and since then, his romance with the sport has been seasonal until he took up this role in 2020. Reigniting F1's coverage on this site, Tanish has fallen in love with the sport all over again. He loves Kimi Raikkonen and sees a future world champion in Oscar Piastri. Away from us, he loves to snuggle inside his books.

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