Kimi Raikkonen says that second places aren’t enough and he needs to increase his wins in the remainder of the season if he hopes to close the gap to championship leader Sebastian Vettel.

With Lewis Hamilton winning the Hungarian Grand Prix before the summer break, Raikkonen finished second ahead of Vettel but this resulted in only closing the gap by three points.

“I am now back in second which was a good way to enter the summer break,” Raikkonen said. “I finished ahead of Seb [Vettel] in Hungary so obviously scored more points than him there. To beat him, we need to be winning races and if we keep finishing second like we’ve done many times this year it’s probably not going to be enough for the championship, but you never know what might happen.”

Raikkonen added that his main focus for the rest of the season will be on qualifying in order to increase his chances of winning races.

“Obviously I keep making my life difficult on Saturdays in qualifying so then we pay a price, but we still have a good car in the race. Now we have tyres that are a little bit different we have to understand exactly how to use them. We made progress in Budapest so it should be easier in Spa, but that will be the same for everyone. To win, it’s always better to be starting near the front.”

Raikkonen won the first race of the season in Melbourne but he has not visited the top step of the podium since. He has finished second five times so far this season including at the last two races in Germany and Hungary.

Photos by the Lotus F1 Team