Today I’ve promised to talk about Kimi and maybe I could get off with a direct and frank admission: I have always had a sincere liking for this atypical and unusual blond, for his extraneity to some styles of ‘robot’ behaviors in this post-modern Formula One, and so on. But I understand that would be not enough. So. Well, since the beginning of his career Raikkonen seemed to me a subject comparable to someone like Mansell. Do you remember, the British Lion? Definitely he was not as complete as Senna and had not 'political' talent like Prost had, and that’s because he was beaten by him during the year they spent together at Ferrari. But Mansell, with a steering wheel in his hands, was a volley of pure emotions.
The Holy Drinker, ditto. Since the beginning, back when he still was at Sauber, we had guessed that his relationship with the auto motor-racing got exhausted in the agonistic element. Driving. Keeping the pedal on the metal. Pushing the car you had to the limit. And paying zero attention to the outside, to the details, to the unwritten rules that are characteristic of that environment.
Is it a limit? For the way things went, for the way things turned out to him, certainly yes. Usually when a driver becomes world champion is cuddled by the team that he brought to triumph. So I also was wrong when on the magical evening of Interlagos 2007 I thought “Kimi has won in an incredible way, I know, he was helped by the feuds inside McLaren team and by the consequences of the spy-story scandal, but now, at Maranello he will be the king, the landlord. So, a new age is coming and this age will last, because the talent can’t be questioned anymore".
I said that I was wrong. The Holy Drinker also was wrong. In 2008, after the success in Barcelona, the second of the season, he had the championship in his hands. On the contrary, because of the tyres covers forgotten at Montecarlo GP, the wrong tyres at Silverstone, the failure to the exhaust in France and the crash with Hamilton in Montreal, well, the de-legitimation is started. Accompanied by a strategic choice that it’s not the case to further analyze here: Ferrari had decided to bet on Alonso, perhaps the course was already fixed in the late 2007 summer, when El Banco was decisive in destroying Dennis, showing those notorious e-mails of his computer.
But this news is story now. I claimed and I still claim that Raikkonen didn’t deserve to be treated in that way. I have the deeply knowledge that if Todt didn’t change job, well, nothing of what we have just told would be happened. But I can’t prove my own sensation, then I stop here.
In brief, Kimi as a driver can’t be disputed and even those who left him agree with this statement. Kimi is the king of Spa and anyone who knows the Ardennes knows that on that track the top winners are really Dragons, from Senna to Schumacher to Prost. Perhaps Raikkonen doesn’t worth these three in absolute terms, for example no-one has ever described him as a formidable test driver. But among his contemporaries (Schumi is not, though he made the foolish thing to return in F1) I haven’t seen yet a pilot who can or should be considered significantly higher than the blond. Alonso is not that, Hamilton or Vettel are not either.
Maybe (and so we come to the heart of the problem) the human element didn’t help the Holy Drinker. I mean, Kimi is really a person of few words. Raikkonen is not a pimp, he doesn’t butter up anyone, he asks for what he's worth, he respect and demands respect. Then stop. I have no memories about ‘political’ pressures he has exercised, in three years he has never been angry with Massa and his clan, and so on. Another driver, in his place, after the miracle of 2007, would probably have raised his own voice, telling ‘from now I am the leader’. He didn’t. He shut up. Sometimes he came to ‘racing department’, chatting with the engineers, then he went to Fanano, where there is an ice establishment, to organize a hockey game.
You understand yourself that, at the end of the day, to get rid of someone like him, very naive but also very practical, it was just a matter of money. Kimi has not a lobby behind, he has no allies in heaven, on Ecclestone’s maps Finland is just a tiny mark. “Everything is held and there is nothing wrong, it’s life and it’s time for you to grow, you have to take it so, yes, beautiful ...” (Vasco Rossi, when you need it, you need it).
In the end, speaking a bit about loyalty and fair play on the track, I don’t remember blatant improper acts or fauls of the Holy Drinker. Hard and tough gamer, but without bandit attitudes. In this, he is much like his compatriot Hakkinen, a fair player.
I think Formula One is missing Kimi, not vice versa.
Source: Quotiano.net - Turrini's Blog
Courtesy: _TaniaS_ KROF
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