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Raikkonen wants change in pit-stop procedure from Ferrari

Utkarsh Bhatla
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Kimi Raikkonen is still recovering from the freak pit-stop incident that led to his retirement from the Bahrain Grand Prix.

Raikkonen had secured P2 in qualifying and was looking set for another podium finish, however a massive pit-stop failure on part of the Ferrari crew meant that Raikkonen ran over a mechanic and brought his Bahrain Grand Prix to premature end.

Kimi was shown the green light by the pit crew whilst his rear tyre was still being changed and Kimi ended up running over the leg of Francesco Cigarini  who sustained fractures in his shinbone and fibula.

The Finn believes that Ferrari’s pit stop procedure needs to be looked at and has to be altered in order to prevent such accidents in the future.

“I think a lot of things are questionable,” Raikkonen said.

“We are always trying to gain on everything, but unfortunately it was far from ideal, and the end result was one of our guys got hurt, but my only job is to follow the lights and go when it’s green.

“Even if it goes green for, I don’t know, one second, I’m gone already, there’s nothing that you can do to turn back to red.

“There are probably a lot of things that could’ve been done differently, but this is what happened, and we paid the price for it.” he added.

Raikkonen has had a frustrating start to the season, having lost out on a second place finish in Australia because of the VSC and then the pit accident in Bahrain.

He is still positive about the season though and believes that Ferrari have the desired package to win the championship this time round.

“I don’t know if it’s unlucky,” he said.

“I don’t think it’s anything to do with the luck, really, to be honest. Maybe at the safety car you can argue it’s unlucky, but it happens, and it can happen to you.

“I don’t think it’s anything to do with luck; it’s purely things that we have to improve on. It’s disappointing obviously to have that early in the season such a bad result.

“It’s a bit hard to say exactly where we’re going to be [in China], because to be honest the first two races are quite different from each other and this is again not necessarily the most normal circuit, so let’s see. It’s hard to imagine it’s going to be a lot different than it has been in the last races, so it will be pretty interesting.” Raikkonen concluded.

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