Raikkonen hoping to salvage a point

The world champion, who fought through the field from 15th on the grid only to go off twice during a chaotic race as he tried to regain positions, is hoping that Rubens Barrichello will be penalised for allegedly running a red light during his pit stop under Safety Car conditions.

"For sure if you cannot finish the race it's not very good," Kimi told UK broadcaster ITV. "But I think we should still get one point because Rubens [Barrichello] went through a red light. It's better than nothing but obviously it is not what we wanted from here."

Raikkonen's Australian Grand Prix Sunday completed a nightmare weekend for the Finn, whose car suffered fuel pressure problems during qualifying that rendered him low down the grid.

From there he put in a typically combative performance, fighting his way up to third before going off at Turn 3 trying to pass Heikki Kovalainen.

Raikkonen then spun at the same place later in the race while trying to pass Timo Glock for tenth.

In a race interrupted by three safety car periods, Raikkonen found himself battling with Fernando Alonso and Kovalainen for the lower points positions until finally his engine begun to sound off-tune and he stopped with five laps to go.

"I don't know what happened to engine we need to have a look but I went off when I tried to get past Kovalainen and did a spin and all sorts of things happened," he said.

"But in the end all those things don't matter if you don't finish the race so I hope we get that one point like we should and then we will go for the next race and try to do better. This is only the first race.

"The car itself was good when we were able to run on our own so I think we have a good car but not that good a race here. For sure this is not the best way to start, but we have plenty of races left and every point we can score is a bonus."