Kimi Räikkönen: “It is Pointless to Blame Vettel”

Kimi Räikkönen, after his US Grand Prix victory, is gearing up for the race in Mexico as he weighs in his chances. In an exclusive interview with motorsport.com, Raikkonen spoke about how Vettel was being blamed for his errors in the past few months.“I don’t know if he made a lot of mistakes,” said Kimi Räikkönen. “Germany he went off, but then it was pretty tricky conditions.”

Vettel had a really good chance of competing for the title and close in on Lewis Hamilton. However a series of errors and mishaps have seen Vettel drop out of the competition, giving Hamilton a competition free path to take a lead in the overall standings. However, Kimi Räikkönen backed Vettel by saying that there are probably a hundred different things that Vettel could have done differently. 

“I don’t know if that really dictates what happened in the end result”, said Kimi. “It’s hard to say. There are always people trying to point finger here and there or [say] ‘This is why he didn’t win’. You know, if you want to point finger on someone, there are millions of things that you can (say) ah, he should have done this like that and the end result would be different.”

“But afterwards it is very easy to always say that”, he continued. “You take 10 years backwards you can point, ‘oh, you should have done that differently and you would have won. It’s pointless really”.

Ferrari‘s wait for a world-champion title continues as Raikkonen remains to be the last champion, when he won back in 2007. “I don’t really think about it,” said Kimi. “So maybe one day, whenever I stop, and then you start thinking, ‘I am happy to be world champion with the Ferrari’. But I am not really thinking that, ah, yeah, I am actually the last one. People say it, but that’s how it played out so far. We’ll see what happens this year and next year.”