Ferrari is back with vengeance! After their one-two result
at French Grand Prix, Kimi Raikkonen won again on Sunday at Silverstone. Raikkonen,
who secured his 12 career victory, needed one hour 21 minutes 43.074 seconds
for the 59 laps of 5.141 kilometers for 303.319 kilometers on the Silverstone
track.
"This is the perfect result and if we can repeat this
we are going to be ahead of everybody," said Raikkonen, who is now third
overall and 18 points adrift of Hamilton.
"It is a nice feeling to win the race as I have been
close three times before, so it is special to finally get a win.", he
added.
The British MacLaren- Mercedes driver Hamilton, who started
the race from pole position, didn’t manage to preserve his advantage and he
failed to put any real distance between himself and Raikkonen in the opening phase
of the race.
Still, Hamilton
finished the race on the third place, scoring his ninth podium place from nine
races. The second was his team-mate and defending champion, Fernando Alonso.
Hamilton
blamed the set-up of the car for his not so-bright result. "I think I made
a wrong decision with the set-up. I chose a different rear end to Fernando and
I think it really caused me problems during the race," he said. "Even
in qualifying we didn't really have the pace we should have had but it was too
late by then to change the car. So it was a good lesson. "But we've come
away with a ninth podium position and I have to be happy with that and hope to
do better in the next race," added the Briton.
The set-up is not the only mistake made by Hamilton at Silverstone. After a postponed
start caused by Massa’s troubles with his car, Hamilton was the first to
pit and made a small mistake when he tried to get away too quickly before the
petrol nozzle had been pulled from the car. The mistake cost him first place as
Raikkonen managed to come out in front of him after going into the pits.
The Polish Kubica from BMW-Sauber finished the race on the
fourth place after defending his position from Ferrari’s Felipe Massa, who minimized
the damage from starting at the back of the grid to finish fifth.
Heidfeld, Kubica team-mate, was sixth. The last two drivers
to finish in points were Heikki Kovalainen and Giancarlo Fisichella from
Renault.
Hamilton
continues to lead the drivers’ championship with 70 points, with 12 points
ahead Alonso and 18 points in front of Raikkonen.
McLaren kept their 25 point lead in the constructors'
standings with 128 points, while Ferrari has 103.
The next race is the European Grand Prix on the Nurburgring
in Germany
on July 22.
