Kimi Raikkonen’s rallying foray made him a better formula one driver.<\/p>\n
That is the claim of 2003 world rally champion Petter Solberg, who got to know the ‘iceman’ during his two-year F1 sabbatical in 2010 and 2011.<\/p>\n
Finn Raikkonen returned to F1 with Lotus last season, impressing the grand prix world yet again after his career had flat-lined in his final two years at Ferrari.<\/p>\n
“I know Kimi and I believe that the rally made him a better formula one driver,” Solberg told the Norwegian newspaper Verdens Gang (VG).<\/p>\n
Like many observers, Solberg thinks Raikkonen’s return to Ferrari next year, where he will become current ‘number 1’ Fernando Alonso’s teammate, will be interesting to watch.<\/p>\n
“Alonso will certainly not like it,” Solberg said of Raikkonen’s impending move.<\/p>\n
“But Kimi is cool,” he added.\u00a0 “He drives the car, and that’s it.”<\/p>\n
Former Ferrari boss Cesare Fiorio said last week he would not have signed Raikkonen.<\/p>\n
“I admire his talent, but not his lifestyle or his technical work,” he is quoted by Italy’s Tuttosport.<\/p>\n
But another former Ferrari boss, the current FIA president Jean Todt, backed the decision taken by the Maranello team’s current chiefs.<\/p>\n
“Ferrari is a formula one institution, and very strong,” he told the Italpress agency, “and I am absolutely certain they will also be at the highest level in the coming years.”<\/p>\n
As for signing Raikkonen, “Ferrari has always known how to make the right decisions,” Todt insisted.<\/p>\n
\u00a9 RIF | GMM<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Kimi Raikkonen’s rallying foray made him a better formula one driver. That is the claim of 2003 world rally champion Petter Solberg, who got to know the ‘iceman’ during his two-year F1 sabbatical in 2010 and 2011. Finn Raikkonen returned to F1 with Lotus last season, impressing the grand prix world yet again after 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":[3302,5262,93,5340,284,152,4639],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19292"}],"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=19292"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19292\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19293,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19292\/revisions\/19293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racinginfocus.com\/rif\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}