Friday, January 21, 2011

Räikkönen will test at the end of the month

World Rally Championship series starts in February in Sweden. Citroën with a new DS3-car driving Kimi Räikkönen's co-driver Kaj Lindström says that the duo gets to test the car at the end of this month

Lindström hopes that the starting season would go easier on every level. According to him it still isn't easy for Kimi to drive rally although he has one full WRC-season behind him.

- If we are talking about the outside quarters and media, the expectation-level was more like an utopy. One has to remember that the genres are so different. On the other hand Kimi would have made all the WRC-drivers laughing stocks if he would have done well there during his first year and achieved great results, Lindström says.

- I think he drove very well when looking at his driving experience. We knew that mistakes would happen. We did those mistakes under a magnifying glass. It was easy to pick on them and gloat at them. All and all it was a learning year and there were some good achievements too but then again driving off and retirements also happened during the year.

- We knew during December how we would continue. It was finetuning of the contracts and other things that take time. Of course some uncomfortable things happened before Christmas. At that point it was meant that we would tell about it only at this point.

- The situation is the same for everybody. The cars change a bit technically and they get new cages. They are a little lighter and clearly smaller from the outside and the distance of the axle is also smaller. Technically they have gone more towards a mechanical car compared to the old WRC-car.

- We will start driving our second season. It means that we still try to improve our skills on every level and go forward. The pace will get faster through that. I think that when you drive for the second year the amount of mistakes also drops. If you drive in a clean way then the results will come through that but let's not start building any huge expectations. Just take it rally by rally.


Source: YLE Sports
Courtesy: Nicole

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