Raikkonen ‘will fight as long as possible’
The Finn braved tricky conditions on a damp Spa-Francorchamps to take his sixth win of the season but McLaren team-mate Juan Pablo Montoya’s late crash took the shine off his victory and put Fernando Alonso within a whisker of the title.
Montoya was running second when backmarker Antonio Pizzonia punted him off four laps from the end, lifting Alonso to second and leaving the Spaniard’s championship lead at a healthy 25 points with three races left.
Raikkonen has suffered terrible luck this year with mechanical failures robbing him of several victories, and Montoya’s second costly clash with a backmarker in three races has further dented his title hopes.
Alonso only needs six points over the remaining three races but Raikkonen is not giving up.
“We are aiming for both championships but I think the luck is not on our side,” he said after winning at Spa for the second race in succession.
“There are still three races to go so we will try to win them and hopefully it will happen. A win is a win always, it will help us in the championship, but maybe not as much as we hoped.”
McLaren are still chasing their first one-two for five years and Raikkonen cursed Pizzonia’s apparent error - which came as he tried to unlap himself - for ruining a flawless race.
Raikkonen, who passed Montoya for the lead in the pits late in the race, added: “We could have had a one-two because we deserved it. We deserved to have both cars on the podium.
“If they keep finishing behind us it is not possible to catch them any more but we will fight as long as possible and we will do everything we can as a team to score as many points also for the team.
“We were very unlucky today because we had a perfect race and everything went well. We didn’t need to risk anything and then unfortunately this thing happened and took quite a lot of points out of us.
“But that is racing and we need to try to make it better at the next race.”
Alonso, who can become Formula One’s youngest-ever world champion with third place in Brazil, admitted he had been cruising to third place with an eye on the title standings.
Even before today’s events, Raikkonen’s hopes were rapidly being extinguished but Alonso confessed luck was again on his side to put him within an ace of making history.
“We didn’t do our maximum, we tried not to make any mistakes,” he said. “I really just backed off and tried to take points - second place is much better than I expected.
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