Raikkonen: I don't know exactly why it happened

Kimi Raikkonen had said Formula 1 needed more danger and excitement and his words came back to haunt him in the Austrian Grand Prix, and admitted he did not know what happened that caused his frightening crash on the opening lap at Red Bull Ring.

Even the phlegmatic Ferrari driver had to admit, in his own unshaken and unstirred manner, that the spectacular first lap pile-up with Fernando Alonso's McLaren was "not ideal".

It could have been extremely serious, with television images showing the McLaren scraping across the Ferrari and perilously close to Raikkonen's head and hands as the two cars hit the barriers one under the other.

Raikkonen, who had lined up 14th on the grid, suffered a lot of wheelspin and lost control while accelerating out of turn two on the opening lap.

Former Ferrari team mate Alonso, who had started on the back row after a 25-place grid drop, was in the wrong place at the wrong time and the two cars collided.

"It was a very strange incident because he lost the car in fifth gear or something like that. Obviously it was quite scary," the Spaniard told reporters after suffering a fourth successive retirement for the first time.

"I could not see anything because with the seat position I was looking only at the sky and then I looked in the mirror and when I stopped I saw the car under my car."

His McLaren team mate Jenson Button said it appeared Raikkonen had "tried to get on the power, went one way, tried to correct and went the other way. A horrible accident."

After this month's Canadian Grand Prix, 2007 champion Raikkonen -- a big fan of the late James Hunt who raced in a much more dangerous era -- had said in a television interview that the sport needed livening up.

"We must do something to make watching F1 more exciting, to appreciate the speed and to make it a little more dangerous. It is part of the game," he declared.

Raikkonen said he was in the dark about what had happened, "I had some wheelspin and then suddenly went left. So that's about it really. I don't know exactly why it happened or what caused it. It was at a pretty odd place."

"Racing is dangerous always and when things go wrong they usually go wrong in a bad possible way and that's what happened here."

Stewards heard from both drivers after the race and took no further action.

[alert type=blue ]Comment

Kimi's accident in Austria brought back memories of his big shunt at Silverstone last year, again triggered in the mid-pack and strange circumstances.

In the aftermath of the Red Bull Ring incident consensus seems to be that there was no tap from the back and Kimi simply lost the back end, which slithered to-and-fro before collecting Alonso's McLaren. The veteran Finn making too many high-profile mistakes at the moment.

With all his experience, the fact he does not know what actually happened is pretty scary to say the least. [/alert]