Kimi Raikkonen has revealed he is prepared to race in the midfield this season as he returns to formula one with Lotus.<\/p>\n
The Finn, a winner of 18 grands prix with top teams McLaren and Ferrari, has spent the last two years in world rallying.<\/p>\n
For the first time since he stepped out of his Ferrari at the 2009 season finale, 32-year-old Raikkonen returned to the wheel of a F1 car this week at Valencia.<\/p>\n
“I was expecting it to feel faster than it was,” he admitted to the BBC.<\/p>\n
“Ok, Valencia is not the fastest circuit, but it was still pretty normal.”<\/p>\n
Raikkonen is also braced for an average season, admitting in Zurich to Italy’s Autosprint magazine that he is unlikely to be a frontrunner in 2012.<\/p>\n
“I expect to have to fight in the middle group,” he said.\u00a0 “But it will not be a drama.\u00a0 It’s no different to my last year at Ferrari.”<\/p>\n
It is believed Raikkonen was ousted by Ferrari two years ago because the team’s lucrative new sponsor Santander was willing to pay handsomely for Fernando Alonso.<\/p>\n
Typically, ‘Iceman’ Raikkonen has no regrets.<\/p>\n
“I have no resentment towards anyone.”<\/p>\n
But he has had to pay out of his own pocket for his recent rallying and Nascar forays, and is having to once again plot a course to the front of the F1 grid.<\/p>\n
“Of course the championship is the goal,” Turun Sanomat newspaper quotes him as saying.\u00a0 “It’s fine to try it, but I am not obsessed about having another championship or not.”<\/p>\n
Raikkonen said his Lotus deal is “basically for two years”.<\/p>\n
“I don’t have any long term plans.\u00a0 Let’s see how it goes with Lotus.”<\/p>\n
His next outings will be at the wheel of the new car at Jerez.<\/p>\n
“Generally, if the car feels good right from the start, you are usually competitive (for the season),” said Raikkonen.<\/p>\n
“The races I don’t think are so different (from 2009),” he added.\u00a0 “Vettel was strong even then even though there is much more passing now, but that depends on the moving wing.<\/p>\n
“I haven’t tried it (DRS) yet, or the KERS because it was the 2010 car (at Valencia).\u00a0 But it’s just one or two more buttons to push.”<\/p>\n
As for his fitness after two years out, Raikkonen said he felt good after almost 700 kilometres at Valencia.<\/p>\n
“I don’t feel in the neck any stiffness,” he said.\u00a0 “I probably expected to have more problems in the neck but I didn’t really have any.”<\/p>\n
\u00a9 RIF | GMM<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Kimi Raikkonen has revealed he is prepared to race in the midfield this season as he returns to formula one with Lotus. The Finn, a winner of 18 grands prix with top teams McLaren and Ferrari, has spent the last two years in world rallying. For the first time since he stepped out of his …<\/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":[5262,5340,3564,152,60],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15036"}],"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=15036"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15036\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15037,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15036\/revisions\/15037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}