Kimi Raikkonen “working perfectly” with Alfa Romeo

Alfa Romeo Racing boss Frederic Vasseur feels Kimi Raikkonen’s move and relationship with the team is “working perfectly” thanks to him being “fully committed” to pushing for results and helping the factory.

This time last year Raikkonen was still at Ferrari before the call was made that he and Charles Leclerc, who was driver for Sauber (now Alfa Romeo), would make the swap between the two teams.
 
The Finn signed a two-year contract with Alfa Romeo and has brought impressive performances which has put him at eighth in the drivers standings on 31 points behind Carlos Sainz.
 
Vasseur said to Motorsport.com: “The advantage with Kimi is before he signed last year, we had hours of discussions, about the team, the positive and negative points, where we could improve, where we have to improve.
 
"We were very open about what is the real situation of the company. And I think now he is not surprised when we have issues because we knew that before.

"He’s fully committed on the project. I don’t know how he was last year with Ferrari, I was not there, but for us it is working perfectly."

Raikkonen entered F1 as a rookie with Sauber back in 2001 and his move back to the team from Ferrari brought doubts about his involvement with the team.

But Vasseur wanted to make sure the commitment was there before taking him on.

"The most important for me was to make sure he was committed," he added.

 "Committed means he will be present at the factory, he will push the guys, he will be demanding.

"He is demanding, and I don’t want him to relax, that’s absolutely not the case.

"I want to have someone in the team pushing for results. It’s a good situation for the engineers also and it’s important.

"But he already understands that he’s not at Ferrari or Mercedes and everything can’t be fixed in two weeks."