Raikkonen: Water leaks won’t cost Alfa Romeo

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Kimi Raikkonen believes Alfa Romeo are not on the back foot after their double water leak issue ruined their FP2 running.

Kimi Raikkonen believes Alfa Romeo are not on the back foot after their double water leak issue ruined their FP2 running.

Kimi Raikkonen says water leaks which affected him and team-mate Antonio Giovinazzi in FP2 have not put Alfa Romeo on the back foot in Bahrain.

Alfa’s running was severely hampered during FP2 at the Bahrain Grand Prix after water leaks were discovered on both cars.

Giovinazzi’s car was fixed in time to complete ten laps at the end of the session, while Raikkonen managed only six tours of the Bahrain International Circuit.

Speaking to reporters in Sakhir, Raikkonen said: “That was obviously not the plan but what can you do?”

“Unfortunately, we had a leak in the cooling system and they almost got it back together, but it was too late.”

Despite the setback, Raikkonen believes that while qualifying will be more of an unknown, Alfa will not head into their Saturday running behind schedule.

“It’s hard to say [where we are] because we didn’t put the second run together,” he explained.

“Even the first one, the car felt very good but I didn’t manage a very good lap, so it will be a bit more unknown than if we would have run.

“It would be a bit easier to say but I don’t think it’s an awfully different picture than what we had in the last race.

“It will be very close and if we get good laps in then they’ll give you a very good result. We’ll see after tomorrow.”

Raikkonen was further in the wars when he spun his C38 shortly after leaving the pits at the start of FP2, leading him to joke that he “ran out of talent”.

“I ran out of talent. With the new tyres, they are shining and it was a bit slippery in the first corner. I was just caught out, he smiled.”

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Alfa Romeo Kimi Raikkonen

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