Kimi reveals cockpit dramas
Although he managed to beat seven-time world champion Michael Schumacher to victory in Sunday's Belgian Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps, Kimi Raikkonen has revealed the full extent of his struggle to nurse his McLaren to the chequered flag while managing to outpace the Ferrari megastar
Raikkonen set a sensational fastest lap just a few tours from the end at Spa, but says he was battling against a gearbox downshift problem as early as lap 10.
"We had quite a few problems with the [gear] shifting," he said. "Every time when I tried to downshift, the car was just pushing and the gears were not going in, so I was struggling quite a bit with it. Sometimes it worked and sometimes not, and I almost spun off a few times because it locked up the rear end completely, so I'm pretty happy with the result we got in the end.
"For a few laps it was working and then I started to have the problem again so I was changing the switches on the steering wheel at every corner and trying to get some sort of idea how I could manage to push again.
"Actually we have a different position on engine braking, so one of them was working, but that's like extreme, so it's like locking the rear wheels all of the time, so I was using it at the hairpin and into the chicane because otherwise I couldn't stop the car. So that was the only way, and then change the position for the other corners."
Raikkonen is also looking forward to watching a British tabloid journalist living up to his promise to "run naked around Silverstone if McLaren won a race this year".
"I definitely will go and hopefully it is raining heavily, so it will be even more fun!" quipped the Finn. "Let's hope that he will keep his word."
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