Zoom Bad luck and good luck for Raikkonen in France

Halfway through the French Grand Prix last week-end, Kimi Raikkonen's Ferrari could be seen racing around the Magny-Cours track with a broken exhaust pipe loosely banging on the right side of the engine cover, with only a tether preventing it from flying off.

When the tether finally gave way under the extreme heat and bad treatment, the pipe broke free as Raikkonen entered a curve at high speed. Thankfully, the piece landed somewhere in the gravel and not on another car - or even worse - on a fellow driver.

Questions have risen as to why the stewards allowed a potentially dangerous situation to continue, but the basic question at Ferrari these days is to understand why the section of pipe broke in the first place.

"The Team still doesn't know exactly what happened," said Kimi Raikkonen. "They will do some tests, but it's difficult to find an answer without the exhaust pipe and with an engine that has been under stress like that for half of the race."

Losing power on occasion and fearing the engine might fail, the Finn lessened his front-running pace in France. That allowed teammate Felipe Massa to move ahead and take his third victory of the season.

In fact, Raikkonen's engine almost shut down twice during the final laps, making his second place a very good outcome indeed in view of the championship.

"Obviously I'm sorry that I didn't win a race where everything went well in the beginning. We have to look at the positive aspects: the team did great work and I gained eight points, although I had a problem which could have made me retire. And now I'm closer to the top than I was after Canada," he said, presently third in the drivers' standings.

"It's a hard Championship with four drivers close together. We're not even halfway through the season and there are still loads of points to gain," Raikkonen added. "Last year at this point I was 20 points behind!"

Daniel BASTIEN
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