The Beyond The Grid F1 podcast is back for its second season as Tom Clarkson connects with Alfa Romeo Racing’s Kimi Raikkonen in his first episode for 2019.
Raikkonen opened up the podcast talking about being back at Sauber – team renamed as Alfa Romeo from 2019 – after starting out his F1 career with the Swiss based outfit in 2001. The Finn said he feels the same as before but of course has more experience now.
Staying with the subject especially with the differences from those times to now, Raikkonen feels it is better now with less testing in F1 as he can spend more time with the family, especially with young children he has to look after.
Speaking about them, he reveals that while Robin understands him going away for races, Rianna always asks as to where he is going. In terms of their careers, Raikkonen is not thinking too far ahead with Robin nearing the age when Go Karting starts.
However, he adds that he will support whatever his children asks for – if at all it is racing then he will take up that role. He also talks about his wife Minna-Mari “Minttu” Virtanen with whom he has been with since 2014.
On the topic of media – he joked that he was forced to do the podcast as well – he feels it is not the hate for them but it is the general feeling that he chose motor sport for racing and not for media and so he would rather only race than spend time with media.
Coming back to the subject of racing, Raikkonen opens up about his time with McLaren and Ferrari which he reckons was more or less same. He talks of the the nickname ‘Iceman’ given by Ron Dennis, even before he started out with McLaren.
When he left F1 at the end of 2009, the Finn says he never regretted the move as he was fed up with the politics and the racing love wasn’t there anymore. He reckons rallying helped him a bit while also giving the example of Robert Kubica.
But while rallying he started to miss the wheel-to-wheel action which is what he loved about F1 the most. He tried his hands at NASCAR and wanted to do few rounds in the Cup series but the financial deal did not come in place which paved a way for F1 return.
There was two options for his return in 2012 with both Williams and Lotus interested in him. He chose Lotus and returned with a bang to end up third in that season. While talking about Lotus, the famous story of partying post the 2013 Bahrain GP sprung up.
He boozed for more than a week and stopped by Tuesday/Wednesday of the next grand prix week in Spain which he called as a normal situation because he knew he can handle. He feels if he can booze and still race the way he can, then there is nothing wrong in that.
He then talks about the small pool of people he has with him since the start of his career where loyalty matters to him the most. Even in terms of rivals, he has a close bond with Sebastian Vettel – he also adds on his teammates he had over the years.
Summing up the podcast, he is asked again to rate his race wins. He agreed that the latest Austin win ranks among the best as reckons it was about time he won a F1 race plus he also things the wins in 2009 in Belgium and 2013 in Australia were also good.
