{"id":17555,"date":"2013-01-11T07:01:21","date_gmt":"2013-01-11T12:01:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/?p=17555"},"modified":"2013-01-11T07:01:21","modified_gmt":"2013-01-11T12:01:21","slug":"raikkonen-could-have-kept-improving-in-rally-hirvonen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/formula-1\/raikkonen-could-have-kept-improving-in-rally-hirvonen\/","title":{"rendered":"Raikkonen could have kept improving in rally &#8211; Hirvonen"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Mikko Hirvonen, the 2012 world rally championship runner up, believes countryman Kimi Raikkonen would have kept improving had he stayed in rallying.<\/p>\n<p>Finn Raikkonen, F1&#8217;s 2007 world champion who has driven for top teams McLaren and Ferrari, finished the 2012 season in third place as he made his return to the sport.<\/p>\n<p>In 2010 and 2011, following his split with Ferrari to make way for Fernando Alonso, the now 33-year-old opted to try his hand at world rallying.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking about Raikkonen&#8217;s competitive return to F1 last year with Lotus after two seasons away, Hirvonen said: &#8220;Well, it was not really a surprise.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This man knows how to drive F1 (cars).\u00a0 When I heard he was going back, I thought that if the car is good, he will survive &#8212; and Kimi did very well,&#8221; he told Turun Sanomat newspaper.<\/p>\n<p>But Hirvonen thinks Raikkonen would have kept improving had he stayed in rallying.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The results would certainly have improved, but how much would have depended on how much enthusiasm Kimi had for practicing and testing.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;But his pace would definitely have improved in the third season,&#8221; he added.<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #888888;\"><em>\u00a9 RIF | GMM<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mikko Hirvonen, the 2012 world rally championship runner up, believes countryman Kimi Raikkonen would have kept improving had he stayed in rallying. Finn Raikkonen, F1&#8217;s 2007 world champion who has driven for top teams McLaren and Ferrari, finished the 2012 season in third place as he made his return to the sport. In 2010 and &#8230;<\/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":[5262,5340,152,4259],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17555"}],"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=17555"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17555\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17556,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17555\/revisions\/17556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}