World championship pace-setter left thanking his lucky stars after opening lap contact fails to derail his challenge in Istanbul.

Despite enduring a less-than-perfect weekend in the Turkish Grand Prix - losing ground to both of his chief rivals in the title chase - world championship leader Kimi Raikkonen nevertheless left Istanbul in positive frame of mind, and ready to turn the tables at Ferrari's two 'bogey' tracks of 2007.

The Finnish star never looked entirely comfortable around the challenging Istanbul Park Circuit from the word 'go', and ended the race with just seven points in-hand over both winner - and team-mate - Felipe Massa and McLaren-Mercedes' Lewis Hamilton, the latter pipping him to the chequered flag by a scant half a second.

It could, however, all have been rather worse still, as light contact with the sister McLaren of Heikki Kovalainen into the first corner on the opening lap left his countryman with a punctured tyre but fortunately - for Raikkonen at least - left the Ferrari largely unaffected.

"It was a difficult weekend for me," the 28-year-old reflected afterwards, "but six points are definitely better than nothing. At the start, I was almost alongside Heikki but then he slowed and I had to brake too to avoid a heavy crash. We touched just enough to damage the end-plate of the front wing on my car - it was not a very serious problem, but it definitely didn't help my race.

"My first set of soft tyres worked very well, but the second was not as good; for the rears, maybe it would have been better to switch immediately to the harder, but that's easy to say with hindsight. After a less than great qualifying yesterday, we knew the race would be an uphill struggle.

"Now we must ensure we are as well--prepared as possible for the Monaco Grand Prix, where we struggled in 2007. This winter we worked a lot on the car to concentrate on those shortcomings which we saw at tracks like this. Now we will see if we did enough to be competitive."

The Scuderia's technical director Luca Baldisserri was similarly thankful that Raikkonen's race had been otherwise unimpeded, well aware that the reigning world champion could now be holding just a one-point margin over Massa and Hamilton had things turned out differently.

"We had the potential to get a one-two," the Italian acknowledged, "but after what happened at the start, we could have ended up with one car outside the points."

"Given what happened at the start, Kimi's result in managing to get onto the podium could have been a lot worse," agreed team principal Stefano Domenicali. "It was yet another example of the fact that, in this sport, it takes very little for the pendulum to swing one way or the other."