Kimi Raikkonen: “I'm satisfied with third place in the standings. But I'll try to do better."

Kimi Raikkonen is not worried about where he will end up in this year's drivers' standings if he is not world champion.

The Finn, who returned to Formula 1 with Lotus at the start of the year, is third in the drivers' standings, 37 points behind leader Fernando Alonso, having finished on the podium six times so far this season.

“It doesn't matter if I'm second or tenth,” he said. “It doesn't make any difference if you don't win.”

"We will see. Obviously I'm satisfied with third place but we expect to always do better and we also want to do much better. We'll keep pushing and hopefully get better. ”

Lotus brought a number of upgrades to Korea, including a new 'Coanda effect' exhaust, but Raikkonen said the team would only be able to understand after free practice whether the new upgrades had given it an advantage.

Asked if the team is optimistic, he said: “Yes, otherwise he wouldn't have brought new things, but we'll see tomorrow.”

“We know the numbers from the wind tunnel and other calculations, but until you race you can't really know for sure,” he added. “We hope that they can perform as we expect and that they will improve our position.”