Raikkonen Willing to Accept Team Orders

Ferrari driver Kimi Raikkonen has said that he is happy to eventually accept Ferrari ‘team orders’.

In Austria, many were surprised when the Italian team opted to let Raikkonen stay ahead of Sebastian Vettel.

But Raikkonen said that no one should be surprised at the result.

“Nothing has changed. We follow our guidelines like I have since I came to Ferrari in 2007. Only the journalists make it a big story.

Team orders will play a role sooner or later, and that’s fine with me too, but that time has not come yet,” Raikkonen said at Silverstone.

It is expected that the 38-year-old’s days at Ferrari are numbered. The team are reportedly eyeing Sauber youngster Charles Leclerc as a successor for 2019.

“We’ll see whether I continue with Ferrari or not. At the moment I don’t know,” Raikkonen added.

Raikkonen has a 45 point deficit to Vettel at the top of the drivers’ championship. He has yet to win a race compared to his teammate’s three victories.

The 2007 World champion added: “For sure it’s better than a few races ago!

“Obviously Mercedes had two non-finishes, that’s definitively helping me and also helping the team, but that’s part of the game, unfortunately. Apart from that I think we’ve been doing a pretty solid job but it could always be better.

“We need to make sure those things don’t happen again because you cannot just expect that everybody else has days like that. Maybe ten years ago it was more likely that every team, every car, would stop at some point in a race but we’ve seen in the last few years that’s very unlikely that it will happen.

“It may happen sometimes but you cannot expect it to happen to the others because it has happened to you. It doesn’t work like that anymore. Apart from that it hasn’t been too bad and we try to keep it up and do the best we can and, hopefully, keep scoring good points.”