Former Formula One champion Kimi Räikkönen tested a Kyle Busch Motorsports truck today at Rockingham (N.C.) Speedway and already has talked to team owner Kyle Busch about running Nationwide and Sprint Cup events.
The 31-year-old Finnish driver, who currently competes full time in the World Rally Championship after a nine-year F1 career that included his 2007 championship while driving for Ferrari, tested Monday and Tuesday at Gresham (Ga.) Motorsports Park.
An international star with 18 career F1 victories, Raikkonen has sponsorship from Perky Jerky beef jerky for his NASCAR races and several international companies as personal sponsors – making the Cup talk more than just a driver fantasy.
But his only signed deal as of today, according to sources, is with KBM for an unspecified number of truck races. The first will come May 20 at Charlotte Motor Speedway and the plan likely is to run three to five races.
“He has asked after the truck debut in Charlotte, which is what our first focus is, to kind of evaluate and see where he’s at and how he feels and what he wants to do,” Busch said Thursday at Texas Motor Speedway.
“He has asked about Nationwide and Cup and if Kyle Busch Motorsports could do that or where would be the best place to do that. He wants to re-evaluate all that once we get past Charlotte.”
Raikkonen is a Red Bull athlete but Red Bull Racing has not had any conversations with him about competing in NASCAR, team general manager Jay Frye said Friday. He has talked with other Cup teams, according to sources. The most likely place for a Cup debut would be at the road course at Infineon Raceway in Sonoma, Calif. in June.
KBM might be able to field a Nationwide car for Raikkonen, but a Cup program likely would be a stretch for Busch’s organization.
“We just said we would evaluate,” Busch said about what he told Raikkonen when asked about doing Nationwide or Cup. “I’ve told everybody here that KBM would like to go to Nationwide. We would like to have a full-time Nationwide team next year. In order to work towards that, you would work towards that this year.
“If it came to be the right situation and we could get cars built or get cars from JGR, it would all be a tell-tale thing, so we’ll just have to wait and see. Right now, our focus is on Charlotte and the truck race there and making sure we get the right stuff under Kimi that he can run well there.
” As far as the tests in the last few days, Busch said Räikkönen has had no problem going fast in the truck.
“The test went really well at Gresham,” Busch said. “Kimi is a race-car driver so he does know how to drive race cars and drive them well. … I got to get in the truck myself and ran some laps just to kind of see where I compared to where he was at on tires and stuff, and we ran identical lap times.
“So he’s right there. He knows what he’s doing.”
Part of the test at Gresham was to get Räikkönen used to the intricacies of NASCAR racing.
“It was just kind of getting his feet used to running caution laps, running down pit road, watching the lights on the tach and how all that goes and then working on some restart stuff and getting him accustomed to coming up through the gears quick and not spinning the tires on restarts,” Busch said. “There are still some things that we’d like to work on a little bit more, but we don’t feel like there’s any time before he gets back [for the race].
“They were in Rockingham [Thursday] with our trucks, and he did good again. He ran a lot better than we expected to run there, a lot faster than we expected to run there. So I’m real happy with it.”
Source: SceneDaily
Courtesy: Miezicat
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