Raikkonen ready to take more risks

The Ferrari driver is currently third in the points standings, behind McLaren duo Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton.

But Raikkonen, who is 20 points behind Hamilton, believes he has the advantage of entering the final third of the season care-free compared to his title rivals.

"I will confront these last races in the same spirit I confronted the ones before: I'll try to win and collect as many points as possible and then we will do the maths in the classification," Raikkonen said.

"We have to give our best and hope that those who are ahead of us have slight problems; I don't have much to lose, so I can risk more than my colleagues at McLaren.

"Six races can seem to be only a few, but for the ones who are leading it's a lot. We were able to see that over the last weekend at the Rally of Germany, where Gronholm paid a high price for a bad day."

Raikkonen, who like the rest of the Formula One paddock, returns this weekend after a three-week summer break, said he was optimistic of the upcoming Turkish Grand Prix this weekend and revealed his car will feature a few technical updates.

"I spoke to the technicians and they told me that we have a couple of new developments in the car," Raikkonen said.

"We have to confront the last part of the season, the one in which everything will be decided. There are three races in four weeks, plus a test: this is certain to be a very busy period, but we are racing on tracks, which are amongst my favourites - Istanbul, Monza and Spa-Francorchamps.

"I think that these are tracks where Ferrari should be very competitive: there are no characteristics that are against us.

"The whole team is working together, to try to recuperate the gap in the points: in Maranello they didn't stop working over the last days!"