Maurizio Arrivabene has revealed that Kimi Raikkonen lost around 0.3s a lap following his clash with Nico Rosberg.

While a podium finish for Kimi Raikkonen still wouldn't have made up for the disappointment of losing Sebastian Vettel at the first corner, it would have provided some consolation to the Italian team.

However, any hope of the podium finish disappeared when the Finn was hit by the Mercedes driver as he forced his way through at T2 in his pursuit of his own teammate, and title rival, Lewis Hamilton.

Though the German was subsequently handed a 10s time penalty for the incident, damage incurred by Raikkonen meant he was never able to capitalise.

"It was impossible to give him more power," admitted Arrivabene when asked why Raikkonen couldn't push and exploit the time penalty. "Due to the impact with Nico, Kimi lost part of the floor and part of the front wing.

"From the calculations we have with the engineers, he lost more or less ten points," he continued, referring to points of downforce, ten points being worth around 0.3s a lap, "so it was quite impossible for him to catch up in this situation.

"Even in such a difficult situation he was doing very good lap times," added the Italian, "even with a rather severely damaged car. We tried from the pit wall to do our best, and also with regards to the strategy. We were aggressive but so were others. We were aggressive, they were aggressive, we slowed down, they slowed down.

"It's a pity that Kimi didn't finish on the podium, but with that impact all chances were gone."

There was little sympathy for Raikkonen or Ferrari to be found at Mercedes however, where Toto Wolff described the penalty as "nonsense.

"He did a brilliant drive to recover back to third, made no mistakes, and really there's nothing negative to say," the Austrian told reporters. "The penalty is just complete nonsense.

"It's not what I want to focus on," he continued, "because we let Lewis down today and that should be something we must be beating up ourselves over, not moaning over an unfair penalty that didn't make any difference because Nico stayed third.

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READERS COMMENTS

1. Posted by Jonno, 04/10/2016 19:41

"If Vettel hadn't been a berk and clouted Rosberg at the start, Kimi wouldn't have seen the Mercedes for dust.

There are five more races this year, how many will be affected by Vettel being stupid.
"

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2. Posted by scf1fan, 04/10/2016 18:09

""Cost" him? It means nothing really; life is filled with "what ifs." Kimi had a good drive, but IF another MB hadn't "blown up," or IF the "other" Ferrari hadn't bounced into Nico . . . Kimi would have been much further away from a podium finish. And, back in reality, Kimi passed by Nico. Not the best pass in the world, but not the worst; should we take it that Ferrari's are that much more fragile that MBs?? "

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3. Posted by Pavlo, 04/10/2016 17:04

"Totally agree that Nico was going to overtake Kimi anyway. And agree with inconsistency - will repeat the comment from Alex Wurz, that drivers now start to think who is sitting in the board and how will they react to such a move."

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4. Posted by Mad Matt, 04/10/2016 12:28

"I'm with gturner38 on this one. However, I also think the rules need to be clarified so that we get some sort of consistency. A few years ago there were lots of Kumi kisses and now it's not allowed in one race but may well be OK again in Japan....."

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5. Posted by gturner38, 04/10/2016 4:05

"The damage didn't cost him the podium. Getting passed did. Rosberg was clearly quicker and while it was a hard move, he did get his nose past Kimi before they had side to side contact. I was surprised there was a penalty at all, but if you are going to say that Kimi wasn't able to capitalize on the penalty due to the contact, you also have to weigh in the fact that in the absence of that move, Nico would have likely still got past later without having to build a 10 second lead since there would be no penalty. Being chased down by a car that finished lap 1 in 17th is the reason why he wasn't on the podium."

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6. Posted by jackois, 03/10/2016 21:37

"Toto Wolff is unbelievable!

Rosberg, not for the first time, tries the impossible. Ruins someone else's race and gets a miserable 10 second penalty. It's about time there's a proper crackdown on driving standard.

Time after time, someone puts a car into a position where the driver with the line is forced to choose whether to wreck or not and nothing is done about it. The commentators scream with joy. ' No-one ever passes there, what an audacious overtake ' There's usually a reason no-one ever passed there before..."

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Rosberg clash cost Raikkonen podium

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