Kimi Raikkonen looked to have the Australian Grand Prix victory under control and later admitted that the win was “not too difficult”.
The Finn fought through the field from seventh to claim the season opener as his own and put it down to good tyre management as he was one of just a few to stop twice, compared to three for his closest rivals.
“It was not too difficult,” he said. “I had a good feeling on Friday – already we just had the best set-up in that time.
“I knew that the rears would be OK. We made some changes, I was expecting that the tyres should be pretty OK but of course you never know what the other teams would do. In the first race you always have doubts about how many laps you can do on a set of tyres.”
He admitted to being disappointed with his qualifying position and therefore had only hoped for a podium, but a quick start helped him to claw back some of those places.
“It was a bit disappointing to only qualify seventh but with the conditions out there it wasn’t easy,” he added. “I knew if I made it through the first lap in a pretty good position we should give ourselves a good chance for fighting for the podium and it turned out to be no too difficult.
“We were pretty happy with the car in Barcelona. Once we came here we seemed to improve the car, it’s been pretty good all weekend.”
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