Gear change problem sees Raikkonen go out in Q2

2014 Chinese Grand Prix

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Gear change problems frustrated Kimi Raikkonen’s qualifying session in China and led to him going out in Q2.

Raikkonen missed the cut for the final ten by just 13 thousandths of a second and will start tomorrow’s race from 11th on the grid.

“Well it’s not very good but it’s pretty difficult,” he told reporters after his early elimination from qualifying.

“Issues yesterday, it’s just difficult today. There’s some small issues with downshifting and that’s how it is.”

Raikkonen has endured a difficult weekend after failing to set a time during the first practice session due to technical problems.

That meant he had to sacrifice some of his race preparation during second practice to work on his set-up.

It leaves him on the back foot going into tomorrow’s race, which is expected to be dry. “We had some issues yesterday in the dry so we have to see,” he added.

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Image © Ferrari/Ercole Colombo

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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20 comments on “Gear change problem sees Raikkonen go out in Q2”

  1. Webber ‘s bad luck has found a new host it seems. ROFL

    1. GB (@bgp001ruled)
      19th April 2014, 9:02

      crashtonator?

    2. Kimi is getting thrashed by Alonso. I’m his fan, but his performances have been pathetic.

    3. heh we’ll se if they discover a new crack in the chassi that makes the car “to dangerous” for it to even participate… A bit embarrassing for Ferrari, constant screw ups on both cars even if Rai has bore the brunt of it so far.

      It’s not just enginge power that is at fault here, there’s more to Ferraris problems

      1. @dr-jekyll Ferrari is screwing a lot of things at the moment but Raikkonen is the only one to blame for breaking his chassis. It even wasted a part of their in-season test, actually.

  2. AlreadyBored
    19th April 2014, 9:18

    I’m already bored,another year will discuss how unlucky kimi was,steering wheel,broken gears,the bad car,the lost motivation etc etc.KIMI WAKE UP DUDE!

  3. kimi needs to up his game; he’s getting thoroughly thrashed by Alonso.

    1. Well, I’d like see how well Alonso would do in a car built for Kimi.

  4. And people here on the forum already started to look for his head, soon it will be Fernando’s turn

    1. Kimi’s head ?!? Fernando’s “turn” ? What is that supposed to mean ?

  5. Not a single word about this gearbox problem on ferrari.com, is Kimi making excuses?.

    1. More like Ferrari hiding there issues.

    2. no one in ferrari.com posts anything bad about the car ;)

  6. In the spirit of Alonso’s Bahrain “excuse”: Kimi had absolutely no problems, he just got beaten by Fernando and it doesn’t say anything about a problem on the Ferrari website. Alonso is just class and Kimi is just a whining driver.

  7. Let’s see how long it takes Magnussen to rear end Kimi this week….third time’s a charm!

    1. @strifeforce
      I was thinking the same. :)
      I was unimpressed when he almost collected Alonso in Melbourne, costing him a good start, but his jewels were actually yet to come it seems. :)

  8. Yeah, could be that drivers “create” problems to excuse their lack of performance. We’ve seen Vettel complaining about shifting when he did not make it to Q3 (while Ricciardo was in top5), Rosberg now trying to excuse his spin by not knowing that was his best lap and that his lap timer had an error etc.

    1. pastaman (@)
      20th April 2014, 3:43

      Or…. there are so many variables in F1, that unless everything is working as it should, you don’t get the best performance

  9. Guys, Kimi is not Massa or Fernando, he is not “creating” problems. In fact it was the team who apologised first for the downshift issues at the last sector. They told “sorry for that we can see the issue”.

  10. are you still discussing about raikkonen?
    if we make a proportion talent-results he could have obtained so much more in his career but he didn’t partly beacuse he was unlucky and partly because he made bad choices and coming back to ferrari to be a number 2 driver was a very bad choice which will cost him his reputation.
    he should have learned his lessons in 2008.
    there were other possibilities: force india, williams, mclaren but he preferred money.
    all problems on his car
    car which doesn’t suit his driving style(domenicali admitted it, so it is not an excuse)
    strange strategies

    what more do you need to understand he is a new massa/webber?
    at least massa and webber weren’t wdc champion and didn’t have all raikkonen’s talent… a champion who ends like this after two solids seasons in a lotus is difficult to explain, even more if you see his ex teammate grosjean in front of him with a dog of a car.

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