Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen is hoping a few relaxing bike rides and a new engine in his Formula 1 car will set him up for victory in Bahrain on Sunday after last weekend's disappointment in Malaysia.
The Finn, who won the season-opening grand prix in Australia but managed only third at Sepang, said on Tuesday that he was glad to be out of the searing heat of Malaysia and at home in Switzerland for a few days.
"Sepang was scorching and after that 'sauna' there's nothing better than mountain air and a bit of cycling," he said in comments published on the Ferrari website.
The 27-year-old Raikkonen, who joined Ferrari this year from McLaren, lives in the Swiss town of Wollerau with his beauty queen wife, Jenny, and their two dogs.
He said that before leaving for Bahrain on Wednesday, he intends to watch some Finnish ice hockey on television, ride his bike and make up for having to go without Finnish food for four weeks.
The new Ferrari star was clearly keen on putting Malaysia and the engine trouble that forced him to drive with uncharacteristic restraint firmly behind him.
At Sepang, he started in third and finished in third, successfully bringing home six points. But he saw the two McLaren drivers - Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton - pull off an impressive one-two victory.
"I'm used to battling for victory myself and I felt empty having to drive when my only goal was to get to the end of the race.
"In Bahrain we'll have new engines, which makes me optimistic. If the whole package is at 100%, we can hope to return to the pace we had in Australia".
Raikkonen said that despite McLaren's rapid improvement between Australia and Sepang, he still expected to do better than third on Sunday.
Meanwhile, team-mate Felipe Massa, who started in pole position on Sunday but finished fifth, was also looking forward to better things in Bahrain.
He admitted to being beaten at the start, when he was overtaken by both Alonso and Hamilton. But he said he had been right to try to overtake the young British driver immediately, even if the result was that he went wide onto the grass and slipped back to fifth place.
"If I wanted to avoid spending the whole race looking at the back of his McLaren, my only chance of overtaking him was then," he said.
