(from autosport) Kimi Raikkonen may have suffered a dip in form in recent races this season, but he still lies just five points behind Lewis Hamilton in the world championship. The Ferrari driver told the press today that he just wants to be in the hunt for the title come the final races of the season, and autosport.com was there to listen. Q. We saw you walking around the track this morning. What is your first impression? Kimi Raikkonen: "It looks pretty nice. It's very wide and the surface looks very smooth. It looks pretty fun, so we will see tomorrow. It looks nice when you walk it, but it is a different story when you go 300km/h around it. But I expect to have good fun when we drive around." Q. How difficult is it to learn a new track? KR: "It takes a few laps when you know where to go, but you learn and learn all the time small things and small lines. But I would not say it is too hard." Q. Are there any special things here, like the bridge where there is a small gap? KR: "There are a few bumps because I guess they need to turn the bridge sometimes. That is the only place where I found any bumps on the circuit, and one of them is in the middle of the corner. So, that might affect things a bit. But apart from that the circuit looks very smooth and very well done. We will see tomorrow how good it is in the end, but I expect to have quite good fun." Q. It has been eight races since you last won in F1. Do you feel satisfied with how the season has gone? KR: "Definitely we would rather have won more races, we had some chances but in the end we couldn't win them. But we are still in a good position for the championship, although the season could have been much better. It could also have been much worse. "Overall, I am happy where we are right now. Lately, the races have not been exactly what I was expecting, so hopefully we will get some good races now and get back where we should be. The biggest issue is getting stuck behind people after having a bad qualifying, so if we can sort out that then we should be fine. We just need to work on some things and hopefully we will get back to winning some races." Q. What are you confident about for the rest of the season, and what worries you? KR: "There are some circuits coming that I enjoy. Hopefully we can get things sorted out so that we can really fight for wins. We have the good speed, as long as we can use it in qualifying, in the race we should be fine. "I don't really worry about anything, there are many races to go. It is easy to lose points, but also easy to win. We will try to do the best every weekend and hopefully after a few races we are still in a good position and then we can try and win the championship." Q. From now on every race is crucial for the championship. Do you like the pressure that this brings? KR: "More or less there is pressure every race, so it doesn't really change anything. When it gets later in the season, when you have the chance to win the championship, it is more crucial not to make any mistakes but that is normal all the time. Like I said, we will do the best we can every race and then see where we end up." Q. Have you been able to go through the qualifying issues you have had recently and are you confident you can get it fixed for this weekend? KR: "We will try at least. At the last race I ran off the circuit, as the handling was not what we expected, I just ran wide. It is always easy to say that I have fixed this or that, but we should be fine. "We know when we get everything as we want that we have the speed, but it hasn't been easy. It is a similar situation to last year so it's not the first time to be in this position. Hopefully, we can fix it now and have better qualifying and better races after that." Q. Qualifying is crucial at Monaco. How crucial will it be here? KR: "Every race is crucial, it's not just Monaco. The last race, if you look, you could not get past anybody if they did not make a mistake, so, it is the same here. The circuit is very wide and there are some long straights, so here there are some better overtaking chances than in Hungary. "But still, if you are not in front then you are going to lose many seconds stuck behind people, even if you get past them in the end. It is always crucial to be at the front." Q. Why do you think Felipe Massa is getting more out of the car than you in qualifying? What are the specific problems you've been having? KR: "There is no one issue. Sometimes it goes right, sometimes not. At the last race I ran off the circuit, which doesn't help. But, like I said, we haven't been exactly happy with the handling and it easily makes it look worse than it is. "The problem is that it is very close between everybody now and if you are one tenth slower you lose three places. We would have fixed it if we knew what to do, but I think we will find a solution. We just need to put more effort in and try to get it right." "Q. Do you think the summer break was a help for you, allowing you to recharge a bit? KR: "I really don't know. We will see tomorrow and over the weekend, but I enjoyed it, I had a good time. We haven't had good races lately, for many different reasons, but we know we have the speed if we get things right so I'm not too worried about it. The main thing, like I said before, is the qualifying. After that, we have good speed when we get it right." Q. What did you do during the break? KR: "I was mainly home, just doing different stuff, seeing my friends and family. And just enjoying it." Q. Can you tell us what the car is or isn't doing that you want it to do in qualifying? KR: "Well, what can I say? I haven't been fast enough, that is the first point. Without going off in the last qualifying we could easily have been in third place, so it is the small things that when it goes wrong you lose a lot of time, and it looks much worse than it is. "It can be just a small issue and it makes you go off the circuit and run wide, and you lose a lot of time. Since we changed to these tyres, even last year I wasn't exactly happy in qualifying, even though in race conditions we are much happier with the car. "It is not a new issue, sometimes we get it right and sometimes we don't. More often, unfortunately, we don't get it right. So we will definitely try to find a halfway solution in qualifying, to have maybe a car that is not exactly what we want, but is maybe a bit easier to drive and doesn't have the issues that we don't want. "But we are still looking for it and it depends a lot on the circuits. At some circuits it is easier to get it right, at some it's very difficult. Hopefully we have found some halfway solution where we are fast but can still be happy with." Q. Do you feel you are back on form here? Do you think you can bully Lewis a bit here, because he has got a lead and he needs to protect it? KR: "I don't see any point to do anything silly. We are as hard as we can be, we try to overtake when we have a chance. But it is not so easy to get in the position always. I don't see any point to be harder to any one of them, we are hard to anybody and we try to win. "The difference is only five points, but every time we are behind him we are going to lose more points so definitely we will try to be in front of the people who are ahead of us. I don't think I am driving better than before, I don't think I drove badly before, we just could not get it right, so we'll see what we can do this weekend and go from there."
