MONZA, Italy -- Kimi Raikkonen insists he will not change his approach to the first corner at the Italian Grand Prix to avoid a repeat of Belgium.
Raikkonen, Ferrari teammate Sebastian Vettel and Red Bull's Max Verstappen collided at Turn 1 at Spa, taking all three men out of contention. Raikkonen will line up for Ferrari's home race in fourth, one place behind his Ferrari teammate, but says he will not adopt a more conservative mindset for the long run to the first chicane.
"It's the normal approach, hopefully we don't end up doing the same as the last race," he said. "You cannot ever plan what will happen in the first corner. So we try to do a good start and go from there."
Though Ferrari has been struggling to out-pace Red Bull in the battle for second recently, it qualified comfortably clear on Saturday, with Valtteri Bottas' Williams qualifying in fifth as a buffer between the two teams.
Asked if he was surprised to see Red Bull off the pace of recent races, he replied: "No not really, obviously some cars you expect to be fast, it's quite a specialised circuit compared to other race circuits. I think it's more or less what we expected but tomorrow might be a different story again. Let's see."
Mercedes has looked untouchable all weekend and Raikkonen thinks that is a more "normal story" after appearing more vulnerable during qualifing in Belgium last week.
"I expected them to be very strong here, you would say that you expected them to be even strong in Spa but who knows, people were struggling with the tyres there quite a lot and it wasn't easy for anyone. We made a pretty good job out of it and the gap was pretty small, here it is obviously bigger and the reasons behind that we can only guess.
"I think our car is behaving as well as it was at Spa but for whatever it looks quite a lot different, but I think that is more that they did a more normal story here and they struggled a bit in Spa."