The amount of vehicles Kimi Räikkönen has collected from several genres in motorsport is in it's own class. There's no doubt that we are talking about today's most versatile motorsport-man.
Räikkönen has raced in karting, with a Formula Ford, Formula Renault 2,0 -liter, Formula 1, WRC-rally car, motocross bike, snow sledge, jetski and soon also with top class NASCAR-cars starting with trucks.
I even heard that Räikkönen has sometimes asked if he could try stunt flying. He didn't get permission for that though...
Basically everything that has an engine interests Räikkönen. At home he has all possible vehicles - at some point there will also be room for the legend's American Legends-car.
Grabbing the NASCAR-challenge proves once again in it's own way the burning passion Räikkönen has to try new things. Usually when a Finnish star leaves the F1-tracks they cool down in for example DTM or Arctic rally. NASCAR-ovals are something that scares them right from the start.
Mika Salo drove in NASCAR-tests but it didn't open up a new career for him there. NASCAR is as popular to Americans as F1 is to Europeans - it's their royal class of motorsport.
Soon Räikkönen will become the Finnish pioneer of that serie too - and most obviously one of it's spectator-magnets.
The Columbian tv- and radio-reporter Diego Meija who I chatted with especially when Juan Pablo Montoya was driving as Räikkönen's team mate in McLaren, stopped by in Barcelona's F1-tests.
Mejia told that Montoya had already for some time compared his own NASCAR-switch to Räikkönen going into the rally world. The Columbian star said that they both had to start from zero because the new genres were so different than F1.
Based upon this Räikkönen has to learn the basics once again, just like he had to do when starting his rally career two years ago.
Turun Sanomat
HEIKKI KULTA
Courtesy: Nicole
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