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Raikkonen Takes Opening Victory In Australia

MELBOURNE, Australia- Last year at Abu Dhabi, Kimi
Raikkonen told his engineer that “he knew what he was doing”, and won the race.
Sunday, at the Australian Grand Prix at Albert Park, the Finn overtook Adrian
Sutil on lap 42 and cruised to a 12.4 second win over Fernando Alonso to hand
team Lotus their first win of the 2013 season. Sebastian Vettel in his Infiniti
Red Bull was third.

“I’m
happy for the team and for myself also.” Stated Raikkonen. “We’ve had a quick
car all weekend and there were no issues with it either, so we could just focus
on trying different things and getting the setup how we wanted. I had a good
feeling that we would be ok with the tyres after practice and the team got the
strategy perfect. I made a few places at the start and then had a good battle
with Lewis [Hamilton] but after that it was quite simple; probably one of my
easiest wins.”

Certainly at the start, Alonso and his Ferrari
teammate, Felipe Massa, got off to a flying start by passing the Red Bull of
Mark Webber, who had a horrible start and shot back to seventh. The two Ferrari’s
were now tucked in behind Vettel who had a two second lead by lap two.

But the tires of all the drivers were wearing fast,
especially the supersofts that wore down quickly even on an overcast day as
this was. By lap 23 after all the others were pitting, Sutil managed to begin
the race on regular tires and stayed out longer than the rest, taking the lead
by lap 24. Sutil continued to increase his lead over both Alonso and Massa, who
recovered their positions after their first stops. Within the next ten laps,
three of the race’s only retirements took place, with Pastor Maldonado out
after the Venezuelan spun his Williams off the straightway on the first turn;
Nico Rosberg encountered an electrical in his Mercedes, and home hero Daniel Riccardo
retired his Toro Rosso with exhaust problems.

By lap 42, Sutil, even after his second pit stop
remained in the lead, but Raikkonen had better tire wear, and on the back part
of the course, passed the German on lap 43 and began to extend his lead with 16
laps to go with a gap of 7.6 seconds over Alonso, who also passed Sutil for 2nd.

However, it went all downhill for Sutil as his tires wore even more and was
passed by Massa, Webber and finally Lewis Hamilton before he found himself in
seventh place with only a few laps remaining in the race.

But the day belonged to Raikkonen, and when the Finn
found open road, he increased his time to finish just over 12 seconds, winning
his second grand prix race for his team since returning to formula one just a
year ago.

For the rest of the grid, Massa, Hamilton and Webber
finished in fourth, fifth and sixth, respectively, while Sutil ended up in seventh.
Sutil’s Force India teammate, Paul Di Resta was eighth, while Jenson Button had
a lonely race, taking ninth. Romain Grosjean in the other Lotus, was tenth.

Considering Raikkonen had an easy win; the Finn believed
that there are many races left to anything to happen.

“You
can’t start the season much better than winning the first race and of course we
hope we can be fighting at the front of the Championship,” he said. “But
there’s a long way to go still and we need to keep pushing hard all the
way.”

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