The Hindu : Sport / Racing : Motor : Raikkonen reaps reward for his persistence

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Tuesday, Oct 23, 2007
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Raikkonen reaps reward for his persistence

He never gave up even when all the odds seemed stacked against him

Raikkonen took the maximum score from the last two races
Alonso tight-lipped about his plans for next season

— Photo: Paul Gilham/ Getty Images

TEAM WORK: Kimi Raikkonen (centre foreground) celebrates the Brazilian GP victory with Ferrari teammates .

SAO PAULO: Kimi Raikkonen never gave up his dream of winning the Formula One World championship even when all the odds seemed stacked against him.

Ferrari’s 28-year-old Finnish ‘Ice Man,’ twice before a runner-up in the title standings with his former team McLaren, finally reaped the rewards on Sunday with a victory in the Brazilian season-ender.

After trailing McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton by 17 points before the previous Chinese GP, Raikkonen took the maximum score from the last two races of the season to emerge champion by a single point.

“For sure we were not in the strongest position at some parts of the season, but we always believed that we could recover, that we could do a better job than the others,” he said.

“Even in hard times everybody was sticking together and we didn’t give up.”

The Finn, whose love of partying is as well-documented as his monosyllabic approach to the media, paid tribute to his team and said he would not let the success change him or his lifestyle.

“It’s not going to really change my life too much,” he told a news conference.

Big party

“People will probably try to make up more stories about me but I’m not going to change myself, I never did before and it’s not going to happen in the future. I lead my life as I want and that’s it.

“For sure, we are going to have a big party, not just here but next week... it’s been a long season and it’s hard to realise that we finally did it after many years.

“It was not really in our mind to be a world champion because I was so far away,” said Raikkonen, who recognised that his luck had finally turned after all the disappointments of the past.

The Finn, who stepped into retired seven-times World champion Michael Schumacher’s shoes this season after five years with McLaren, echoed his German predecessor in saying the Italian team felt like a family to him.

“I enjoy every moment with the team,” said the first driver since the late Argentine Juan Manuel Fangio to win the championship in his first season with Ferrari.

“I have enjoyed Formula One much more this year than I enjoyed the last few years, for many reasons — not because of the driving, but for some other reasons.

“I’m more than happy to win the championship with Ferrari, especially in the first year with the team.

“It is such a nice big family, great people to work for. I’d rather win with them than anyone else,” added Raikkonen, whose victory at Interlagos was his sixth of the year.

The triumph came at the end of one of the emotionally-charged and controversial of seasons, with Ferrari winning the constructors’ championship after McLaren was stripped of all its points for a spying scandal.

Asked whether he felt beating Lewis Hamilton and double champion Fernando Alonso to the title was a sort of justice, Raikkonen hesitated. “I think so, maybe yes,” he said.

Different tactics

Meanwhile, Alonso said McLaren would have been celebrating a World championship victory instead of bemoaning a shock defeat had it used different tactics this season.

“McLaren got it wrong, they lost the championship for the mistaken decisions they made in the second part of the season,” the Spaniard told Radio station Cadena Ser on Monday.

“It isn’t a secret that they haven’t helped me much. It wasn’t a very well organised season from the point of view of the management,” he added.

“There was no sensation of being a team and the result speaks for itself.

Each person will have to draw their own lessons from this season, but if we had taken a different approach we would have obtained different results.

“What the boss said after China about the team racing against me and not Kimi was a clear declaration of intentions,” he said.

“In the last few races, my hands and feet were tied. I had no power to make decisions.

I had to race as they told me. McLaren lost and Ferrari did a better job than anyone else,” Alonso said.

Tight-lipped

Alonso remained tight-lipped about his plans for next season.

“The only reality is that I’m under contract to McLaren,” he said.

“I know there are a lot of rumours, but I haven’t spoken with another team and that is the reality.”

Asked if his former team Renault was his number one choice if he were to leave McLaren, he replied: “No, right now I’d say no.”

McLaren to appeal

Meanwhile, McLaren confirmed on Monday it would appeal FIA’s decision not to penalise four drivers investigated for fuel irregularities following the Brazilian Grand Prix.

“We will lodge an appeal,” McLaren head of media communications Ellen Kolby said in an e-mail.

The ruling by the sport’s governing body maintained Lewis Hamilton as the seventh-place finisher in Sunday’s race, two spots less than he needed to win the title.

After the race, FIA opened an investigation into possible fuel irregularities involving BMW-Sauber and Williams, whose drivers finished fourth, fifth, sixth and 10th in the race. If at least two of the three ahead of him had been punished, Hamilton would have taken the title from Raikkonen.

But in a decision more than six hours after the end of the race, FIA said there was not enough evidence to penalise the drivers or the teams.

The fuel temperatures on the cars of fourth-place Nico Rosberg of Williams, fifth-place Robert Kubica of BMW-Sauber, sixth-place teammate Nick Heidfeld and Williams’ Kazuki Nakajima were as much as 14 degrees Celsius below the air temperature, FIA said.

It wasn’t the first time fuel irregularities could have affected the Brazilian GP. In 1995, Williams and Benetton were docked constructors’ points after failing inspections. Michael Schumacher and David Coulthard initially lost their points, too, but FIA later reviewed its decision and gave the points back. — Agencies

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