“On his day, the fastest”
Kimi Raïkkönen, born 17 October 1979, had a solid first year in Formula One for Sauber in 2001, and sufficiently impressed McLaren to earn a seat in Ron Dennis’s team for 2002, taking the seat left by double-world champion, mentor and fellow Fin Mika Häkkinen.
Picture above: Kimi Raïkkonen scores his maiden F1 win at the 2003 Malaysian Grand Prix. During his career, he’ll score 21 Grand Prix, 103 podiums and 18 pole positions.
Kimi quickly established himself as a title contender by finishing runner-up to Michael Schumacher in 2003, and Fernando Alonso in 2005. Raïkkonen time at McLaren could have been even better, Kimi driving superbly, but it was marred by a succession of unreliable cars, like in Germany in 2004 (picture below) prompting him to move to Ferrari in 2007.
This change saw him crowned F1 World Drivers’ Champion in 2007, a little bit luckily and thanks to the help of team mate Massa at Interlagos, pipping both McLaren drivers – Hamilton and Alonso – to the title by one point.
Former McLaren engineer Marc Priestley: “Kimi was the fastest over a lap on his day, but Kimi was far from being the most complete Formula 1 driver. He won a World Championship, you can’t knock him, but he only won one. And I firmly believe – and he had no desire to do this – but if he’d applied himself like Lewis Hamilton, he could have gone to win many World Championships.”