Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen says that Lewis Hamilton's misfortune in the Turkish Grand Prix is a prime example of why he hasn't given up on his own championship campaign.
Raikkonen gained on four points on the Briton after Hamilton's tyre failed while he was running third on Sunday.
The Finn is still 18 points behind the McLaren star in the drivers' standings, but according to Kimi, that situation could change very quickly.
"Honestly, I thought reducing the gap by four points would have been possible if everything had gone perfectly well," he said. "But that wasn't the case, in one way or the other the gap came down by four points.
"After every race I get asked how the championships will proceed and my answer is always the same: we have to wait until the last race in Brazil to be able to say for sure, because anything can happen.
Istanbul was a fine example, Hamilton was doing well and racing for high points but then unexpectedly he had a tyre failure."
Nevertheless he collected some points, but not as many as he had hoped for," he added.
"He will certainly give his best until then end, but that is what we will also do. You can't take anything for granted and we have to push to the maximum race after race."
Raikkonen also reiterated that because over-taking has become so difficult in the current era of F1 technology, he knew his chances of winning the Turkish Grand Prix were minimal once he had been outqualified by Felipe Massa.
"Since the qualifying I knew that the race was to be like that. If on Saturday all would have gone well, I could have caught the pole," he said.
"But after I had been beaten by my team-mate I knew that my cards had already been played.
"When you know when your team-mate is going to pit, there is hardly anything to do, above all if you are the one who has to stop before him.
"Today's Formula 1 is like that: Whoever is ahead rules, especially when you have the same strategy.
"With these cars it is practically impossible to stay behind another car and looking for an opportunity to overtake," he added.
"There is too much turbulence and every time you get close you can feel a heavy understeering. To be able to overtake you have to be a second faster than the car ahead of you or you need profit from an error by the driver.
I got really close to Felipe just once, but we were at the end of the second stint. My car was really, really good: I could have gone much faster than I was.
"The most important thing was that the team gained as many points as possible, so there was no point in taking unnecessary risks."
SOURCE: ITV-F1
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