Raikkonen prepared for the next round of the fight

10/04/2007

"The Malaysian heat was as tortuous as always," writes Kimi Raikkonen in his Ferrari blog. "That is why it feels so cherish to spend a couple of days back at home.

"On Sunday evening after the race we flew with Jenni, Mark and Toni from Kuala Lumpur via Amsterdam to Switzerland. After such a sauna-like heat and enormous sweating in Malaysia nothing feels better than to go bicycling up there to the fresh mountain air," he continues. "I have been missing most the change of the climate as I have missed also the Finnish meat balls and mashed potatoes. It feels like a luxury to get them both after being more than four weeks away from home. I hope to have also a chance to watch the Finnish ice hockey play off finals and some NHL games on my TV in Wollerau. But time is getting short. The main thing is to relax, get some fresh oxygen and charge the batteries. On Wednesday I fly back to Bahrain to race again.

"I think, at least, it will not harm me any way to visit home between these two races. I heard that Alonso flew from Australia back to Europe and it did not seem to harm him, either.

"The Malaysian weekend was not good for us, that is for sure," he admits. "Already coming there we knew that we were not in the best of positions to start with that weekend. Because of the engine worries we had to make a compromise after a compromise. That put us in a position where we did not want to be.

"All the time we had to play on the safe side with that engine and there were also some other technical issues that we were not able to do as we would usually wanted to do.

"I always want to fight for the victory. That is why I felt a little bit disappointed and empty inside, when I had to race just in a way to be able to finish it. It is like playing a football game defending a goalless draw. Well. We finished third, so it was, for sure, the best possible result for us in that race. I was quite pleased with the result. We got six points more and we know that the most important thing right now is getting points from every race.

"I have always liked Sakhir. It is a challenging place. We have always gone there with a good speed, but some how we have not been able to get the whole weekend together in a way we would have wanted to. Sometimes it is like that. Some circuit gives you hard times as long as you hopefully get everything going exactly right in your way.

"We will get a new fresh engine for Bahrain," he reveals. "That makes me feel very optimistic. As I have always said I am here to race just to win. When we have our whole package working 100%, we should be back to the same speed as what we had in Melbourne.

"Before the season we had a good test in Sakhir circuit. For sure, McLaren has improved since that, but at least we should be able to challenge them better than in Sepang. You never know before the weekend how it goes. F1 moves on so amazingly quickly and so many things can happen during the race, also.

"I expect that we are in a better shape than we were last Sunday. The team does everything it can to get us back to the winning speed. It will be tough and it will become even tougher. Everybody knows that. There is never an easy victory in this business. Never. I know."