Kimi Raikkonen expects a ‘reasonably strong’ race for both him and the Lotus E20 on Sunday, believing the car should suit Albert Park.
“You need a car with good traction and everything from testing says that the E20 has good traction so that will help us,” said the Finn. “Strong turn-in and stable braking help too, and those areas also feel good with the car so we are well placed.
“The track can be a bit slippery at the beginning of the weekend and the Melbourne weather is not always very warm; the Melbourne weather can definitely be a bit tricky. This will be the first race so I don’t know how we’ll compare to the other teams.
“We won’t know for sure until we get out on track. It’s very difficult to say before we’ve been out on track, but I think and hope we’ll be reasonably strong.”
Raikkonen isn’t making any predictions on where he believes the team could finish, despite proving good form during testing.
“I will try to do as well as I can and see where we end up. For the first race in Australia we want to have a good weekend without any major issues or mistakes.
“I don’t know where we’re going to be on the grid – nobody knows. If you look at the lap times from testing everybody is very close to each other. We don’t know what everyone was doing with fuel load and that makes a massive difference. We’ll have some idea after practice in Melbourne, then after qualifying everyone will know exactly where we are.”
