[color=red]Raikkonen hoping for Alonso to trip up[/color]

Raikkonen hoping for Alonso to trip up
24 points to catch up with 50 up for grabs



Kimi Raikkonen said that he will have to hope his rival Fernando Alonso trips up in the race for the world title after seeing him make the most of a lucky break in Sunday's Turkish Grand Prix.

Raikkonen put in a perfect performance, by his own admission, to claim maximum points in a race where he was relatively untroubled by his rivals and led every one of the 58 laps.

But his Colombian team-mate Juan Pablo Montoya cost him a potentially vital two-point advantage over Alonso when a collision with a back-marker allowed the Spaniard through to claim second.

Raikkonen is now 24 points behind with just 50 left available and Alonso could now secure the title before the European season comes to an end at the Belgian Grand Prix in September. But the Finn remains confident he can close in on the title.

"This is not perfect but I couldn't do anything more," said Raikkonen. "I did the best I could and there's no way to score any more points. If Alonso keeps finishing second we just need to do the best we can and you never know what happens in the races. Two points are better than nothing. We just need to keep working hard and win more races and see where we end up."



Raikkonen started from pole position and held off a stern challenge from Renault pair Alonso and Giancarlo Fisichella on the opening lap before easing away to claim his fifth race victory.

Montoya looked set to make it a perfect afternoon in Istanbul but he collided with Jordan's Tiago Monteiro in the closing stages of the incident-packed race to leave Raikkonen dismayed.

"It would have helped me and the team had he finished second so we were a bit unlucky. Two points are two points and they can make a big difference at the end of the season," said the Finn.

Alonso was pleasantly surprised to be handed a 'much better than expected' extra two points following his move into second place but admitted he was disappointed by his team's lack of competitiveness.

Not that that matters if he can continue to stay close to Raikkonen and he added: "Sometimes you make your own luck and I kept the pressure on and it paid off because I was close enough to take an advantage."

"I think the McLarens are difficult to beat these days but we have learned and we prepared our race strategy to have no traffic in the race, to have a clean race, starting from the front of the grid and to do a normal race alone. In terms of the championship we know that McLaren are faster but this result was as good as I could have hoped for."