Although Dany Bahar has admitted signing Kimi Raikkonen involves Lotus spending “a big amount of money”, he expects the 2007 world champion to be a bit rusty initially.<\/p>\n
Asked to compare the Finn’s return with the difficult F1 comeback experienced by Michael Schumacher, team title sponsor Group Lotus’ chief executive said: “Definitely it is a gamble with Kimi as well.<\/p>\n
“He has maybe taken two years, but we have the time for Kimi as well.”<\/p>\n
Bahar is quoted by Finland’s Turun Sanomat: “Whether it takes three days, six races or 20 races, remains to be seen.<\/p>\n
“The important thing is that Kimi steadily improves.\u00a0 As long as this happens, we give him time.”<\/p>\n
But there have been questions about 32-year-old Raikkonen’s basic motivation, with some commentators thinking he did not take his earlier career with McLaren and Ferrari seriously enough.<\/p>\n
“He has grown up, he is no longer young,” Bahar insisted.<\/p>\n
“He knows what he is doing and what is expected of him.\u00a0 I believe he will take things a little more seriously.”<\/p>\n
Also being given another chance is Eric Boullier, following speculation the team principal was on the way out.<\/p>\n
“After a not-so-good year you are often criticised,” said Bahar.\u00a0 “The important thing is he learns from it and identifies the areas where he has to strengthen, and he has done that.”<\/p>\n
\u00a9 RIF | GMM<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Although Dany Bahar has admitted signing Kimi Raikkonen involves Lotus spending “a big amount of money”, he expects the 2007 world champion to be a bit rusty initially. Asked to compare the Finn’s return with the difficult F1 comeback experienced by Michael Schumacher, team title sponsor Group Lotus’ chief executive said: “Definitely it is a …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0},"categories":[3],"tags":[2544,251,5262,5340,152],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14587"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14587"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14587\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14588,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14587\/revisions\/14588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14587"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14587"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14587"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}