Raikkonen wary of losing ground

Kimi Raikkonen fears he cannot afford to lose any more ground in this year’s four-way scrap for the Formula One world title.

Raikkonen has seen a seven-point lead disintegrate into a seven-point deficit in the space of two races after trailing home ninth in Monaco and failing to finish in Montreal.

The Finn’s accident in Monte Carlo was all of his own making as he lost control of his Ferrari late in the race before ploughing into Adrian Sutil’s Force India, sending him out of the points.

A fortnight later, Raikkonen was the innocent party as McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton drove into the back of his parked car at 30mph in the pit lane.

After finding himself the hunted in Monaco, Raikkonen is now the hunter as he chases down BMW Sauber’s Robert Kubica, Hamilton and team-mate Felipe Massa heading into Sunday’s French Grand Prix.

“It definitely looked better for me before the last two races, but there’s still a long way to go,” assessed Raikkonen.

“The points gap is pretty small between all the guys at the front, so we haven’t lost anything yet.

“As long as we start getting where we should be in the races, we can easily come back, but we can’t really afford to drop back more than we are now.

“It’s not the perfect place, but we have a strong package and we just need to get the best out of it and use it.

“We will see what happens now, but there are definitely many races to go, so nothing lost or gained. I’m not too worried about it.”

The 28-year-old is confident of avoiding a run of three successive races without picking up a point, an unwanted feat he last achieved four years ago.

“We are definitely going to score points, if we can just get the car to the finish,” said a hopeful Raikkonen.

“We’re obviously here to try to win the race. Hopefully we can manage to do that, and that would help a lot.”

In seven seasons at Magny-Cours, Raikkonen has always finished in the points, claiming victory for the first time last year, a win that propelled him on the road to becoming champion.

“It’s a good circuit, not the easiest to overtake, but overall I quite enjoy it here,” added Raikkonen.

“Last year we started to get things going right here and hopefully it will be the same this year.”