Ferrari triumph divides drivers after team orders

MONTE CARLO, Principality of Monaco: Kimi Raikkonen’s grim face told a story of its own on Sunday when he finished second behind Sebastian Vettel in Ferrari’s one-two triumph at the Monaco Grand Prix.

While the four-time champion German joyously celebrated the 45th win of his career - and Ferrari’s first in Monte Carlo for 16 years — in a torrent of joyous words, the taciturn Finn fended off questions about the use of team orders.

Raikkonen, 37, the 2007 world champion, resisted all invitations to condemn Ferrari, but made clear he was unhappy to be deprived of a possible victory.

As the 29-year-old Vettel beamed with pleasure on the victor’s podium, his team-mate looked as if it was the last place he wanted to be.

Af ter star t ing from pole position, he led comfortably until he was surprisingly called in for an early pit-stop that handed the initiative to Vettel who romped to the scarlet scuderia’s first win since the halcyon days of seventime champion German Michael Schumacher in 2001.

The instruction to pit was from Ferrari in a bid to ‘under- cut’ the chasing pack - a tactic not usually used in Monaco, where the later ‘ over- cut’ tactic of waiting to match a rival is regarded as more successful.

But he stopped short of saying his disappointment was a result only of the team’s overall pit-stop strategy.

“I was called in... That’s about it,” he said in his first terse response. — AFP