“F1 has never been the most important thing in my life”
Does Kimi Raikkonen care about any of the above?
OF COURSE HE DOESN’T. Raikkonen, the Iceman, has made a career out of not caring. It’s his niche, what makes him a cult hero (a status perhaps aided by his world title triumph being 13 years ago). He’s a driver who says what he thinks, if anything, and doesn’t care if anyone is listening.
But this is the thing – Raikkonen has just become F1’s most experienced driver of all time. Even if motorsport wasn’t naturally geared towards statistical salivation, the list of names to have held that accolade is impressive (see panel, p25). To name but a few: Juan Manuel Fangio, Graham Hill… now Raikkonen.
Ahead of him clinching the record for world championship grand prix starts, Autosport got the chance to speak to Raikkonen in a rare (thanks to 2020’s restrictive unpleasantness) face-to-face interview. After establishing that he firmly, and unsurprisingly, doesn’t care about taking the mantle of F1’s most experienced from Rubens Barrichello (“No, not really,” is his response to our opening question. “If somebody would ask me the number, I have no idea – I’ve never really looked how many races I’ve done or how many others have done”) and that again, he’s “not really” bothered by how he’s remembered, we ask Raikkonen to take us back 19 years.
At the 2001 Australian Grand Prix, Raikkonen, then aged 21, graduated straight to F1 as reigning Formula Renault UK champion, after just two years of car racing. In Melbourne that year, as Michael Schumacher won for Ferrari, Raikkonen raced to seventh at the flag from 13th on the grid in his first race for
