Alfa Romeo’s Kimi Raikkonen has lamented his miserable performance in the Hungarian Grand Prix, while urging his team to do better.
Already struggling through the first two races of the 2020 Formula 1 season with a largely uncompetitive car, Raikkonen saw his fortunes take a further nosedive on this past weekend.
Dead-last on the grid in qualifying, the Finn’s race was hardly any better as he received a five-second penalty for overshooting his grid slot at the start, and only managed to reach P15 at the flag.
“It has been a disaster but we just have to do things better,” Raikkonen said afterwards. “And we have to make the car faster – as simple as that.
“It wasn’t a very busy race for me. Unfortunately, starting where we did meant we had a very difficult job ahead of us: we did what we could but it wasn’t enough for points. Our pace wasn’t too bad, I made up a few places at the start but the penalty put me back at the bottom.
“The grid was a bit slippery, I went a bit too long into the box and I didn’t have the time to reverse; we could have been a few more places up so it’s a bit of a shame.
“We have a lot of work to do to improve our qualifying, but we can be positive about our performance on Sundays.”
In his second year with Alfa Romeo, Raikkonen finished last season 12th in the standings with 43 points. Through the three races so far this season, he is in a four-way tie for last with no points to his name.