According to the Race Engineer Räikkönen's speed is the same as it was during the McLaren-years

The afternoon's tropical rain has just wet the paddock in Sepang. The team-premises roof is still filled with rain. Under the roof stands Kimi Räikkönen's race engineer Mark Slade.

The race engineer's body language says it all: the team is doing well - no matter what the weather is.

How different was the Kimi that became Slade's working buddy?

– There is no difference between this Kimi and the Kimi who was in McLaren. The old Kimi was fantastic and this Kimi is just as fantastic, Slade praised.

– We just put our gloves on and the job gets done: he always gives the same accurate feedback, he always goes fast, he is always cool and he can handle almost any situation that comes up in the race.

In Melbourne Räikkönen's problem with the visor affected the race result.

– Kimi had problems with the visor. He changed it. Our schedule was very tight so we didn't have time enough to change the visor and do the necessary amount of laps.

– Unfortunately Kimi made a mistake on the lap which would have been good enough to take him to Q2. I hadn't updated the time that was left. When Kimi slowed down after the mistake we missed one lap. It was a very stupid situation, Slade said.

Lotus-Renault's E20 -car has succeeded all expectations.

– I am really impressed over the car. I believe that our whole team is pleasantly surprised over it's competitiveness. You always hope that you get a quick car on the track. It was fast in tests but we approached the opening race so that we would see where we are. We had just as good pace in Australia as we had in the tests.

– Hopefully the same pace is also in the upcoming races.

- The development program is going on in the factory. Kimi came back from rally and Romain Grosjean starts his career all over again. This is totally super for both of them - what a fantastic opportunity to make results! The whole team is excited over it, Slade said.

– Kimi's race pace was in place and his quali-pace would also had been in place. We just didn't get to show it in Melbourne.

The Lotus-car's speed on straights is very good and on top of that the car also works very well in the many fast corners Sepang has.

Turun Sanomat, Kuala Lumpur

HEIKKI KULTA

Courtesy: Nicole