#forzakimi

A special thank you thread to everyone related to Kimi Raikkonen and/or has worked with him 

Starting with his family: Minttu, Robin, Rianna, father Matti (RIP- died in 2010), mother Paula, brother Rami etc.

Kimi's physio and personal trainer, Mark Arnall They started working together when Kimi joined McLaren. Mark used to be Mika Hakkinen's trainer before Mika retired in 2001.

Kimi's engineer Julien Simon Chautemps, team principal Frederic Vasseur,

Jacky Eeckelaert 

Willy Rampf 

The Alfa Romeo/Sauber staff

The man who gave Kimi his F1 big break, the one and only Peter Sauber

Kimi's management team, David (RIP) & Steve Robertson (father and son duo)

The McLaren staff of 2002-2006 such as Ron Dennis 

Marc Priestley

Mark Slade

Adrian Newey and anyone else I might've forgot

The Lotus staff of 2012-13 such as Eric Bouiller 

Also a shout-out to Daft Punk & Romain Grosjean

The Ferrari staff of 2007-09 & 2014-18

Jean Todt

Dave Greenwood

Mauricio Arrivabene

Carlo Santi “You will not have the drink”

Sebastian Vettel

Antonio Giovinazzi

All of Kimi’s team-mates

"Hamilton's 7th... by my calculations we win the championship by 1 point." Chris Dyer, Kimi Raikkonen's 2007-09 race engineer

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't John Booth & Graeme Lowdon the team bosses at Manor Motorsport, where Kimi won 2000 Formula Renault UK championship?

Of all the many tributes written about Kimi Räikkönen, there was one that made you stop and think. Somebody wrote on Twitter recently that they felt an epochal shift in F1 following Kimi’s retirement, as the only Formula 1 driver who was older than them had now called it a day.

His retirement truly marks the end of an era. There simply won’t be anyone like him ever again.

Kimi was the last of the real racing drivers: an endangered species since the early 1990s, when old-school heroes were gradually replaced by younger athletes with a higher degree of corporate awareness. The breed persisted right up to the dawn of the 2000s (Jan Magnussen was the last full-time smoker in the sport, for example). But Kimi marks the definitive close of the last chapter, the final bastion of – to use one of his favourite phrases – not giving a shit.

Of course, a lot of self-confidence comes from seniority. But Kimi has always been like that, ever since he arrived in the United Kingdom as a fresh-faced teenager, in the hands of managers Steve and David Robertson. He lived with them for a while in Essex, where a Finn in Chingford must have stood out like a zebra on the north pole. He still speaks fondly of those days. “Did you ever see that TV programme, Footballers Wives?” Kimi once asked with a grin. “I lived in that house where they filmed it, when I first came to England…”

So from a very young age he learned to be self-sufficient and stand on his own two feet.

Perhaps that’s where the nickname ‘Iceman’ came from, but in reality, that’s what he’s always been like, as his older brother Rami once pointed out.

“In the end, Kimi will just do what he wants to do,” said Rami. “The only sure thing is that the more you tell him not to do something, the more likely he is to do it.”

Rami has driven in a few races and rallies himself: the first competition car that Kimi drove was actually Rami’s Opel rally car, taken without consent one evening by little brother.

And it was through rallying, rather than racing, that I first got to know Kimi properly, back in 2010 – when he drove a Citroën C4 World Rally Car as part of the Red Bull Junior team.

His team-mate at the time was Sébastien Ogier, who has done pretty well for himself since – winning as many titles in rallying as Lewis Hamilton has done in Formula 1. So Kimi was immediately up against the very best.

I spent two years looking after Kimi’s media commitments in the World Rally Championship and then – in a parallel life – watched him return to Formula 1 and achieve even more success.

Throughout that whole time, he never changed. Perhaps what most people don’t realise is that Kimi, the Iceman, is in fact one of the warmest and friendliest people in the F1 paddock. But it’s in the less scrutinised environment of rallying that you really get to know him.

A lot has been said and written about Kimi in Formula 1: plenty of it untrue. Although that’s not something that Kimi especially minds: he sees it as normal and part of the game. But after he left Ferrari at the end of the 2009 season – on very favourable financial terms – he was hoping for something a bit different in the world of mud and gravel, which was very much a homecoming for any Finn. So Kimi began to show a side of himself that had been much more hidden in Formula 1. The media following in rallying is smaller, the atmosphere nowhere near as political. It’s an environment where you have to feel comfortable peeing in public, for example – there are many hours a day spent in the car, and little in the way of public toilets. And under those circumstances, it’s hard to stand on ceremony.

Take the Rallye de France, which during Kimi’s WRC stint was hosted in Sébastien Loeb’s home territory, close to Strasbourg. Citroën’s base was a slightly grotty chain hotel smelling of cabbage, with dim lights and bolsters instead of pillows.

Definitely not the sort of establishment where you would expect to find a former Formula 1 world champion, or indeed any world champion. But Kimi didn’t mind. In fact, he slept very well there.

The morning of the start, with just a few minutes to go, co-driver Kaj Lindström was on the phone at reception, frantically ringing upstairs. The rest of the team was already in the bus. Including Sébastien Loeb, who was pretty amused. “It’s good that Kimi’s here because it takes the heat off me,” explained the Frenchman. “Normally I’m the one who’s late…”

Just as the bus was about to leave, a freshly-showered Kimi appeared, wandering nonchalantly down the stairs, sipping a small coffee.

“It was such a nice hotel I thought I’d enjoy it a bit longer,” he explained, before discarding the coffee cup, hopping into the minibus, pulling his cap down over his eyes, and promptly falling asleep for the three-minute journey to the service park. Which is presumably the only reason why Citroën chose such a hole in the first place.

But the hotel did at least have a decent bar and kebab shop nearby. And Kimi’s patronage of it underlined again just how unpretentious he is. He says he’s not going to miss Formula 1, and in many ways, he never really belonged there: at least not in the modern era. For Kimi, it was always all about driving the car rather the whole show (or, in his own words, “bullshit”).

Perhaps the person who knows him best is Mark Arnall, his trainer since the McLaren days.

“Kimi doesn’t get caught up worrying about what people think of him,” said Mark. “People have differing opinions about Kimi but he really doesn’t care what they are. Instead, he has this ability to focus solely on driving the car.”

The people who thought that Kimi never really got his head around rally cars were wrong too. Here’s a little-known fact: in testing Kimi was frequently faster than Loeb. Rally testing, of course, is all about pounding up and down the same piece of road, and even though the shortest test stage contains far more corners than the average circuit, you do eventually end up learning them all by heart. It was only the assimilation of pace notes that sometimes held Kimi back.

Lindström, the only man in history to share a competition car with Kimi and witness his work at first hand, says: “It was a fantastic time definitely; it’s maybe just a shame that it didn’t last a bit longer. The talent he had for driving the car was massive, that was immediately obvious. But, looking at what he achieved afterwards, he probably did the right thing to go back to Formula 1. Nice memories for sure.”

And that’s what it’s all about for Kimi, driving the car. He says he’s not that interested in road cars (he mostly drove a Volkswagen Transporter van to all the different rallies in Europe) but he’s owned some incredible machinery too such as the Mercedes CLK DTM, a road-going racer built as a homologation special in just 100 examples.

Everything else takes second place: especially media work. “In the end, they all mostly ask the same questions,” said Kimi once. “Then sometimes if you think about it and say exactly what you think, they use it against you. So really, it’s best to say nothing.”

I often used to do written interviews for Kimi in rallying; but started off thinking that it was best to check with him first about what he wanted to say. Kimi simply shrugged. “Say whatever you like,” he replied. “They’ll just make it up anyway…”

Kimi may leave some interviewers frustrated but if he has made a commitment, he sticks to it. One journalist on Rally Finland thought he wasn’t going to get a Kimi interview scheduled for the afternoon, due to a re-arranged technical debrief. But at around seven in the evening, when the whole thing was long forgotten, Kimi suddenly mentioned that he hadn’t seen the journalist in question. “Where is he?” asked the Dictaphone-shy Iceman. “I can do it now.” And he did too, very eloquently. One of the other ways in which he was quite different in rallying to how he was in Formula 1.

And Kimi is properly funny. “What’s the best thing about Red Bull?” he was asked at a press conference. “You can put vodka in it,” came the deadpan reply.

There were many other anecdotes too; sadly, it’s best we don’t repeat them here. But the cackling laugh – which he spends a lot of time doing – is not what made him famous. Instead, it’s that transcendental sixth sense.

“He’s always had this great natural feel that lets him push hard and still get the most out of the tyres,” said Steve Robertson, his manager from the very beginning. “The number of fastest laps he’s set speaks for itself. It’s a God-given talent.”

The only drivers with more fastest laps than him are Michael Schumacher and Lewis Hamilton. Kimi hasn’t ruled out a return to rallying or indeed anything (he’s been offered a test in the all-conquering Toyota Yaris WRC) but it’s going to have to be on his terms.

“No plans for now, but I don’t want to have a schedule,” he says. “Last time I did rallying and there was always a schedule and I don’t want that. I’m not in a rush.”

And that’s probably a first for a man whose alter ego is ‘James Hunt’.

Kimi Raikkonen’s record-breaking career

● Kimi is Finland’s most successful Formula 1 driver ever, with 1865 career points, 21 wins and 103 podiums.

● In the 2005 and 2008 Formula 1 seasons, Kimi equalled Michael Schumacher’s record of 10 fastest race laps in a season, set in 2004.

● Kimi currently holds the third-highest record for the total number of fastest Formula 1 laps at 46.

● In 2008 Kimi scored six consecutive fastest race laps (in Spain, Turkey, Monaco, Canada, France and Britain) equalling Alberto Ascari’s record for the most consecutive fastest race laps in a single season.

● Kimi was the first driver to win on his Ferrari debut since Nigel Mansell at the 1989 Brazilian Grand Prix and the first to win, set fastest lap and claim pole position on his Ferrari debut since Juan Manuel Fangio at the 1956 Argentine Grand Prix.

● At the 2007 Chinese Grand Prix, Kimi gave Ferrari its 200th Grand Prix win. At the 2008 French Grand Prix, he gave the team its 200th pole position.●

● Kimi’s first drive in a World Rally Car came in January 2010 at a private gravel test track near Citroen’s headquarters on the outskirts of Paris. He has competed on 21 rounds of the World Rally Championship in total, scoring 59 points.

Kimi also has experience of snowmobiling and powerboat racing on an amateur basis. He has been known to use the pseudonym ‘James Hunt’ in homage to the 1976 Formula 1 World Champion, who is one of his heroes.

● Kimi bought his own rally car while he was at Ferrari – an Abarth Grande Punto Super 2000 – which he designed a unique livery for. He used it on the 2009 Rally Finland: his WRC debut.

● Kimi’s brother, Rami, has also tried rallying, competing in the Arctic Rally and Rally Finland with a Honda Integra.

Kimi Raikkonen's first memory of racing a car dates back 32 years. He didn't have a driving licence at the time (he was only 10), but in the Finnish town of Espoo in the early 1990s, that didn't seem to matter. The car was an old Lada, which may or may not have been road legal, and the track was an improvised loop of the yard around his parent's house.

There were only two entrants in this historically significant racing series: Kimi and his older brother Rami. Kimi had ridden motocross bikes around the front yard for as long as he could remember, so he knew the track well and was pretty sure he could handle the step up from two wheels to four -- even if reaching the pedals was still a bit of a stretch.

"We had some old cars that we were able to drive in our yard," Raikkonen recalled in a recent interview with ESPN. "It wasn't a big yard, but there was a road to go up and then turn around and then it went back behind the house.

"So when we were like 10 years old and 12 years old, we had these old Ladas that we would drive starting just on the road and then full speed up towards the house. Sometimes we hit the tree or the corner of the house, but my mum and dad were kind of OK with it, so ..."

At this point in the interview it's impossible not to interrupt. The thought of a 10-year-old Kimi Raikkonen driving a Lada into a house requires an instant follow up: "Wait, you hit the corner of your parent's house?"

"I mean I hit it one time and then hit the tree on the other side, because there was the corner of the house and then the tree," Raikkonen responds, deadpan. "It's not like it broke the house or anything, but there were cracks on the concrete -- you know, the foundations.

"But mum and dad were OK with it because they felt it was better for us doing those things than being some stupid idiot at a railway station drinking or something. So, it was nice."

It turns out Raikkonen's parents were right. Those early days racing Ladas in the garden were the origins of a remarkable Formula One career that went on to span 21 years and result in a record-breaking 348 races (to date), 21 wins and one world championship. At Sunday's Abu Dhabi Grand Prix he will take part in race No. 349, which will be his last in Formula One.

After such a storied career, you might think that there's nothing left to learn about Raikkonen, but that couldn't be further from the truth. When he crosses the line for the final time in Abu Dhabi, he will do so as one of the most popular drivers in the sport but also one of the least understood.

It's undeniable that those two factors are in some way linked. For many, Raikkonen has achieved cult status precisely because he gives away so little in front of the cameras.

His short answers in interviews provide a blank canvas upon which tall tales from his early career of week-long drinking sessions and cross-continental partying paint a lurid picture. To the outside world, he is the last true rebel in a sport that has become increasingly homogenised by sponsor money and PR control.

But after 20 minutes talking face-to-face with Raikkonen, it's clear that he's not the enigma he's made out to be. Most of the stories that make up the Raikkonen legend are over a decade old, and in recent years he's certainly mellowed. He's now a family man, and when he retires from F1 on Sunday, his main aim is to spend a lot more time with his wife Minttu, and two young children, Robin and Rianna.

Not that he's made any plans.

"I don't want to make plans," he says. "We will go for a holiday after the season and then see. I am not in any hurry to decide anything. If something interesting comes along then I will do it, but we'll see."

Doing what he wants has been a core theme of Raikkonen's time in F1 -- whether it's reaching for an ice cream during a red flag period or taking two years off during the peak of his career -- and he believes it has been crucial to the longevity of his time in the sport.

"For sure there are lots of people who have tried to change me over the years, especially at the beginning," he says. "They said you should do this or that, but I never really listened to them -- and luckily not, because I don't think I could live my life doing something that makes other people happy.

"I think you can kind of do things to make people happy for a year or something, but it's never going to work in the long run. You will have a bigger issue.

"I got some s--- about it, but I never really cared about that. Luckily I have been fast enough that I still had my drive after all the things I did.

"Honestly, when people say to me, 'How can you do this or that and have nobody give you s--- about it?' I say, 'F--- that, it took me years and years of fighting against people and only now it works out.'

"I do my job and I do my thing, but I always take driving seriously. The rest I always said, I don't like it and I am not here for the interviews or anything else but the driving."

You don't have to search far on the internet to find stories that make you wonder how Raikkonen got away with doing "this or that" during his time in F1. A number occurred during his time at McLaren, when Raikkonen was shooting to fame in his early 20s and appeared to be partying as hard as he was racing (search "Raikkonen," "Gran Canaria" and "inflatable dolphin" for one such example).

His team boss at the time, Ron Dennis, was a certified control-freak who valued the image of his team almost as much as he valued its performance on track. Raikkonen's antics at that stage of his career did not always fit with Dennis' vision of what a Formula One driver should be, and on one occasion it nearly cost the Finn his job.

"Ron always wanted to do it his way because how he sees the whole team and its image [is one thing], and I completely understand but I wasn't ready to do that," Raikkonen says 15 years later.

"In most parts, yes it was fine, but in some parts he was absolutely not happy. That's life and we got through it, but afterwards there were some funny things to remember.

"I had my contract ripped and put in a bag and he gave it to me like that. But then I won the next race and he said, 'No, no, no, no, it's OK, let's forget the whole thing.'

"But I never cared about it, I always knew I was quick enough so I would sort it out one way or another. But I think my managers were always a bit on edge. They are good memories because it all worked out OK.

"People always felt like I had a s--- relationship with Ron, but I don't think I had a s--- relationship. For sure, we had some arguments and he needed to kick me out a few times, but fair play.

"I think as a person, if we wouldn't be sitting in the F1 paddock and we were just chatting about normal things, I always had a good relationship with him. Even when I saw him afterwards, I always joked with him.

"But I understand his position and we just saw the same thing with completely different eyes."

Perhaps Raikkonen is getting out of F1 at the right time. In an era when sports stars get "cancelled" for saying or doing the wrong thing, he's happy he isn't starting his career now.

"It's f---ing crazy -- in the world generally, I mean," he adds. "Because whatever you say, people will say, 'How can you say this?' and they can turn anything to look bad.

"It's a f---ing weird thing, it's f---ing crazy. People get crazy. I mean, I don't care. If I say something and someone gets upset, I honestly don't give a f---.

"If you insult somebody, fine, I understand why you get upset, but in general if you can't say something [because it upsets someone] ... I just stay out of it because I don't want to waste my time on this kind of bulls---. There are other things in life to worry about.

"But generally, it is difficult because everybody looks at what the people are saying and try to make more negative out of it more than anything else."

After his time at McLaren, Raikkonen moved to Ferrari, where he became world champion in his first season with the team in 2007. Even though it came shortly after Michael Schumacher's run of five titles in the early 2000s, Raikkonen's win was a big deal. Fourteen years later and he is still the last driver to win a championship with the Italian team.

But did becoming a world champion change Raikkonen at all?

"I don't think my life changed. I think people probably looked at me differently. They were asking different questions and they expected different things, but it didn't feel like my life itself changed. But why would it change?

"It was just a different result. People might look at you differently, but frankly I don't think it is a very good reason to look at you differently, do you know what I mean?

"I wouldn't look at Pedro [Cebrian, Alfa Romeo press officer] differently if he won. He'd be the same guy, you know? For sure, with Ferrari when we won both championships obviously in Italy they are very passionate about it, but that's nothing to complain about."

Two years later at the end of 2009, Raikkonen received a substantial payoff to leave F1 as Ferrari signed Fernando Alonso to replace him in 2010. It led to a two-year hiatus in Raikkonen's career, which he filled with rallying and even a short spell in NASCAR. But Raikkonen is not one to hold a grudge, and proof of the strength of his relationship with Ferrari came in 2014, when he returned to the team following two years at Lotus in 2012 and 2013.

"The stuff with Ferrari, I always felt that with the people that were important I had a good relationship," Raikkonen said. "Obviously they had their reasons, but I have no interest to talk about that and no issue with it as well.

"I always said at that time, I was more than happy to leave and I was quite fed up with all the politics and bulls--- in F1, so it was good to be out for a couple of years. Without that I wouldn't be here today, good and bad.

"So why would I start saying bad things about them? They had all their rights to put whoever they want in the car and I think we left in a good condition.

"Of course there were some people who were a bit so-so, but I don't care, you know? They felt they owned things but they didn't try to screw me over completely, so I have no issue with it."

It's clear that the longevity of Raikkonen's career is based on a few key factors. First and foremost was his performance behind the wheel -- without it he wouldn't have made it to F1 in the first place -- but also his determination to do things his way and not burn bridges. Whether that was down to a conscious decision or just a natural character trait, it means Raikkonen is still incredibly popular among the people who worked with him.

But even with his strong relationships in F1, it's hard to imagine Raikkonen hanging around the sport as a TV pundit or commentator. The only thing that might bring him back is if his kids want to follow in the family business, but he insists that is a long way off.

"We got a go-kart for [Robin] in Switzerland but we haven't had much time to use it because I'm always away," Raikkonen says. "It's very nice and I think Rianna wants to try, so maybe now before the snow comes we can go and try."

Much like his parents supported him in his youth and turned a blind eye to the cracked foundations of their house, Raikkonen is happy to support his kids in whatever they choose to do.

"I don't mind what it is, I'll enjoy it," he says. "I don't mind if it means I go there and clean the karts and do the mechanic stuff, for me it's fun and it's nice to see that they enjoy to do something.

"If something comes out of it, then great, but if not, great and I hope they have both found something that they are interested in."