Kimi Räikkönen and Kaj Lindström drove all and all 22 WRC-rallies and six other rallies. Their best position in WRC was 5th in Turkey 2010. In France's national serie Vosgien in 2010, the duo achieved their only victory by making the fastest time on every stage.
.– Kimi would be an undisputable talent as a rally driver too. He already started to get some routine but only by driving WRC-rallies 2-3 years more, would we have wiped that last second off from the lead's time, Lindström calculated.
Then were you surprised when the driver went back to the F1-tracks?
– It didn't come as a surprise that they wanted Kimi back just as it didn't come as a surprise that he still had the passion to go back, Lindström says.
Then will we still see Räikkönen driving rally someday?
– I hope that Kimi would someday drive rally as a hobby. However driving on the track is more Kimi's own environment, his real thing, but I have to say that we did well in rally too even with a this short experience.
– Kimi has a very positive feeling towards rally, but driving man to man is more natural to him and as a bonus he gets the fun that overtaking offers. Work comes first and F1 is his work, whereas rally is more like a hobby to him.
Difficult to find the right pace
Räikkönen wasn't lacking speed in rally but his difficulty was to find a good rhythm right from the beginning of the race.
– When driving on a track you see what your pace is all the time because you can compare it to others' pace. In rally you just have to rely on your pace and on yourself to drive fast enough. You can't make any straight comparison. If you go too fast you are in danger of driving off and if you are too careful, then the clock doesn't like it at all. Finding the real pace and rhythm comes only with the routine after driving enough. Kimi already got a pretty good hunch about this plot.
How does Räikkönen expect that he will manage with Lotus next year?
– Because you can't know about the car beforehand I can only hope that Kimi finds a good feeling from the car. If he can't drive for leading positions with the car then he just have to be satisfied with the level he can achieve with it.
Berger is courted into becoming a Lotus-consult
In paddock rumours they are anticipating that the main sponsor Lotus Cars would cash in this season's Renault-team from Genii Capital. They are rumouring that Eric Boullier is going to leave.
Italian Gazzetta dello Sport -magazine wrote that they are courting Gerhard Berger as a consult to Lotus. The experienced Dave Ryan was already with the team in Brazil.
The team's current owner Gerard Lopez assured when announcing Räikkönen's contract that getting Kimi was only the first step of many progress steps they will take in order to create a new chain of success.
Turun Sanomat
HEIKKI KULTA
Courtesy: Nicole
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