Will Raikkonen win another title?
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No, I don’t think he’ll win another title. His best years are behind him now and while he can still drive circles around most of the other drivers on the grid, there’s a couple that will outdo him nowadays. If he’d been a bit younger he might’ve won another one on talent alone.
Lotus can do it and so can Kimi. Underserving, not at all, he’s race craft mirrors that of Alonso, they can both drive cars no matter what the circumstance. This talk of the top teams is rubbish. RedBull are a great team but they were not without their challenges last year, they just learnt to how to evole effectively. The Mclaren was a fast car straight out of the factory, but Whitmarsh and Michaels can’t even tie their shoes together without getting into a double knot and Ferrari, well I think this will be a better year for them, but only time will tell. Lotus, Mercedes and Williams I believe have a chance to dis throne them all this year. While everyone is complacent that the regs haven’t changed much, those who rest will die in their sleep.
I don’t think Raikkonen was “lucky” or “undeserving” in 2007. According to the “misfortune” series of threads, he would have won it anyway.
With Lotus, I don’t think he will. Put him in one of the top cars and I think he’ll have as good a chance as anyone (though I don’t think he would necessarily be favourite if paired up against someone like Hamilton, Alonso or Vettel in equal machinery). The problem is that in order to win in the Lotus which we can agree is probably not going to be the class of the field, he needs to be able to consistently deliver ten tenths every time he is in the car, in the way that Alonso did last year in the Ferrari which was also slightly slower than its rivals. This is something I think Kimi struggles with, and something he isn’t getting better at with age.
That said, last year he did seem to slip well into the role of ‘plucky underdog’ and delivered a few of his best performances since his days at McLaren. But over the course of the season it became clear that he is not quite as quick as his far less experienced teammate, even on a really good day. That to me says everything you need to know – to win in an underdog car you need to bring those extra tenths to the table, and sadly for Kimi that’s the one thing he doesn’t seem able to do. But if the car is good, then his solid racecraft, dependable driving, and vast experience could easily bring home the goods.
This is why I think that Lotus has one of the best driver pairings. A seasoned, dependable old hand, who on his day is still blisteringly fast, and a younger, inexperienced teammate who may be a little bit hot headed but brings massive speed to the team and can learn from Raikkonen to help fulfil the potential he undoubtedly has. Of the two, I’d say it’s Grosjean who is the better prospect for winning championships in the future.
hile Raikkonen obviously had to hold onto the lead once he inherited it, he simply didn’t have the pace to win the race on his own.
couchsurfing ukYeah, the link is spam. Though I think the rest of his post refers to PM’s comments about Abu Dhabi 2012.
@The Iceman – I disagree mate. I dont think he has more natural ability than Vettel, Hamilton or Alonso – he certainly is close, but these 3 have him covered IMO. So short answer is no. He will need a better car than the 3 latter, but they wont be out of the top three cars while Kimi races. Vettel is still a kid remember and will still have 10 years in the sport- I know he rubs up some people the wrong way (me too sometimes!) but he gets too little respect for a 3 x champ.
Also I disagree with the comments that Kimi was undeserved of the 07 title – maybe lucky – sure, there is plenty of luck in any sport- but I dont like a world champ being labeled “undeserved” unless doing something really wrong.
He is certainly in the mix for a 2nd!
As much as I’m convinced Kimi has the skill, talent and experience to win another title, I think Kimi is in an unfortunate situation. Like some of you have said, Alonso and Vettel have the foremost shot at winning a title with their skill and car. Button and Hamilton can’t be ruled out the next couple of years, with Lotus still being rumored to have an inferior budget to the teams those 4 race for, it’d be a massive uphill battle at Lotus. At the same time, I don’t see him returning to Ferrari or McLaren; Ferrari is unlikely to put Kimi next to Alonso, while Kimi would probably refuse to get back to the PR-machine called McLaren.
If anything, an opening at Red Bull could give him his best shot, or an absolutely major development at Lotus. The problem is, Vettel is very, very quick, while Kimi (in my opinion) has a better racecraft. However, Vettel is much better at controlling a race from the front, so in a situation where Red Bull has a race winning car, it’d still be mighty difficult for Kimi to out score Vettel.
Like many drivers, Kimi was unlucky to not win the earlier titles he was in contention for and later on ran into fierce competition. Even Alonso and Hamilton could have won more titles if it wasn’t for Vettel or each other. It’s great for us F1 fans, but I can imagine if guys like Kimi, Fernando and Lewis would somewhat have preferred a late 90s competition level.
Why do people claim that Raikkonen deserved to win 2005?
In the first three races of the season, Alonso managed to pull a 19 point gap out of him, on merit alone. This proved to be crucial near the end of the season, as this gap never got any smaller or less than these 19 points of margin.
After that, many people would’ve suspected that he was in cruze and collect mode, while Kimi was on the raged edge. I don’t buy it. In 2005, McLaren scored 10 wins and 17 podiums, as opposed to only 10 win and 18 podiums for Renault. The McLaren was clearly the quicker car Imola-onward, but Renault was more consistent.
People talk all about Alonso inheriting 3 out of his 7 wins on Raikkonen’s misfortunes. San Marino and Germany is correct, however, Europe was Kimi’s own fault for not only flat-spotting his tyre, but also refusing to pit.
Likewise, while people do have a tendency to complain about Alonso being gifted wins from Raikkonen, no one mentions the fact that Raikkonen was also gifted two wins in Canada and Hungary, when his teammate, Montoya, had bad luck.
This post on Auto-sport describes my feelings on this subject quite well.
I hate when people argue that Kimi beat Alonso in 2005, he was “clearly better”, “the car let him down”, etc.
In the early races of the season, Renault was better, they won the first 4 races (Alonso won 3 times, and in Australia he finished 3rd starting from 13th). After these first races, Alonso had quite a big advantage in the WDC and Renault decided not to take any risks; they didn’t use their engines at maximum power, they developed new engines but they didn’t put in the newest one because they wanted to be safe (Symonds said this in a 2006 interview ).
McLaren did the opposite – in order to catch up, they had to build stronger engines, they had a faster car but it was also more risk. The car was fast but unreliable due to the engine, but they had to risk it because they had no other chance. Renault was playing safe, and McLaren’s car was much faster, this was obvious for everyone, so no surprise that in most races, Kimi seemed faster than Alonso. His WDC was never really in danger though, because Renault had those stronger engines “in stock” , if Kimi had come too close in the points, they would have used them.
They put the strongest engine into the car at the last race of the season in China, and Alonso won the race quite easily, an indicator that they could have won more races if they hadn’t been cautious… What I want to say is that the 2005 season was a bit misleading, you can’t compare the two drivers and say “poor Kimi was better all year but his car always let him down”, I think their performances were more or less equal with their given machinery…Also, if a car often breaks down, retires due to mechanical problems, blown engines, etc, I don’t think it is it “bad luck” for the driver – or of it is, than a slow car is just as much bad luck. Unreliable car, slow car: both are the teams fault, it’s the team who can’t make the car more reliable, it’s the team who can’t make them faster. And it’s a team sport, the team’s performance counts more than the drivers. So I don’t think Kimi had bad luck that year, his team just couldn’t provide a better car. We don’t hear people say how “unlucky” Alonso was in 2008 or 2009, but the basic problem was the same, the team couldn’t provide a better car. If we can say (and a lot of people say) that “Kimi would have won the WDC in 2005 if he hadn’t had so much bad luck”, why can’t we say “Alonso would have won the WDC in 2008, if…” As I said, unreliable car = the team hasn’t worked well enough, slow car = the team hasn’t worked well enough, I don’t see either of them as “bad luck”.
Bad luck, to me, is when you get hit on the helmet by a bouncing spring, when someone crashes into your car and it’s not your fault at all , when you hit an animal etc.
Sorry for the rant but I’m tired of all these talk about Kimi being clearly faster in ’05 and his bad luck.
There’s absolutely no reason to believe that Raikkonen deserved the championship any more than Alonso in 2005.
Perspective, I’d say. I wouldn’t say Kimi was unlucky in a traditional sense, but the article comparing Kimi in 2005 and Alonso in 2008/9 as ‘the team not giving him a better car’ is crooked. In that case, Schumacher deserved the 2005 title since Ferrari and Bridgestone gave him inferior material, like Kimi deserved the 2001 title since his Sauber wasn’t up to the challenge. Kimi had a very good season in 2005 and in my eyes he was let down by his team in a completely different sense; he was able to fight for the WDC, but couldn’t due to failures. That’s something completely different than leaving a team because you don’t like the atmosphere and return to a team which is struggling to build a good car in the first place.
If Kimi was undeserving in 2007 who then deserved it more?
Kimi won the most races (IIRC), Hamilton blew it in China by his own mistake and Alonso was beaten by a rookie… For the very least I don’t see how he would’ve deserved it any less than Hamilton in 2008 (he was “lucky” in Brazil so obviously he didn’t deserve it right?). I don’t even think you can “deserve” your championship title any less than any other driver, you still had to be there in the right car to collect all the necessary points that others for different reasons couldn’t.
Another thing I don’t get is people downplaying his Abu Dhabi victory. Yes, Hamilton retired and Kimi inherited the win, but you have to finish if you want to win and if McLaren can’t produce a car being able to finish that’s their fault and not anyone else’s.
Kimi is as good as anyone on the grid, he is extremely quick and showed a high level of consistency. He has the talent no doubt, but Lotus would have to give a almighty effort to keep developing a championship challenging car throughout a full season.
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