Räikkönen's quietness benefits setup work

Race engineer Mark Slade praises Kimi Räikkönen's skills in improvement of the car's settings

Slade has worked as race engineer for Raikkonen in McLaren and Lotus.

- Kimi's feedback is excellent. He is one of the most punctual drivers with whom I have ever worked with. He makes my job very easy. He tells you what is wrong with the car and I will offer a solutions to fix it. We will together decide which is the approach we choose, and then implement it, Slade said on MTV3's live TV broadcast from Shanghai paddock.

Taciturnity is a distinct advantage when improvements must be found in the car.

- With Kimi we get the car to the best setup faster than with some of the other drivers, who speaks perhaps more, but are not able to analyze at the same precision, what in the car is right or wrong, Slade says.

Source: MTV3
Courtesy: reppo

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

Slade and Räikkönen had their first meeting in six years

Kimi Räikkönen came to Barcelona in the afternoon and had a long meeting about the test schedule with his race engineer Mark Slade, who started in the team at the beginning of March. Slade worked with Räikkönen last time in McLaren in 2006.

Finnish driver is in the next Wednesday in popular British Top Gear tv show and tries to break Sebastian Vettel's top time at airport of Dunsfieldin. BBC broadcasts the program a week later on Sunday.

Grosjean has a Japanese race engineer Ayao Komatsu, and he joked that radio traffic certainly sounds amusing when a French and a Japanese are having a conversation.

- We'll try to give Kimi and his engineers all the feedback what we can. Kimi will be trying different things, so that we can get the car into top shape in Melbourne, Grosjean explained.

Turun Sanomat, Barcelona

HEIKKI KULTA

Courtesy: reppo

Räikkönen to reunite with former McLaren engineer

Kimi Räikkönen will have a familiar race engineer for his return to Formula 1 this year. Finnish reports in Turun Sanomat and the television broadcaster MTV3 claim that the 2007 world champion will work with Mark Slade.

Slade, recently at Mercedes GP working alongside Michael Schumacher, was Räikkönen’s race engineer at McLaren years ago. Slade also previously worked as a race engineer to Mika Hakkinen and Heikki Kovalainen.

Räikkönen will start working together with his engineer at Barcelona at the last test before Melbourne. “I wanted him and I am pleased that it worked out,” Räikkönen confirmed.

In other news, Eric Boullier has denied rumours Räikkönen is a shareholder in the Lotus team. It was reported that the 2007 world champion’s retainer this year was subsidised by owner Genii granting the returning F1 driver a small slice of the Enstone based team.

“He has no shareholding. It is complete nonsense,” Boullier is quoted by MTV3.

“Räikkönen has a two-year contract as driver,” he added. “Genii Capital holds 100 per cent of the team.”

Boullier also dismissed suggestions Räikkönen, whose teammate is the reigning GP2 champion Romain Grosjean, is Lotus’ obvious number one driver.

“There is no such thing in the contract,” he said.

Source: F1Zone.net