Kimi Matias Raikkonen spent his childhood in a house built by his great-grandfather in Espoo, a suburb of the Finnish capital, Helsinki. To provide Kimi, born October 17, 1979, and his older brother Rami, their parents are Matti and Paula. worked tirelessly. There wasn’t enough money all the time. So that the sons could professionally go karting, Matti had to work at night as a taxi driver and a bouncer in a nightclub.
Carier start
After a fast succession in Finnish, Scandinavian and European go-karts, Kimi was driving a race car and quickly won two British Formula Renault championships. In the fall of 2000, despite the fact that he had practically no experience, he was admitted to the tests of the Sauber Formula One team. Impressed by his crazy pace and confident piloting, Peter Sauber showed discernment and signed a 21-year-old Finn for next season. His meteoric rise on the road to the pinnacle of motorsport sparked a fierce debate about his right, not to mention his willingness to participate in the royal auto racing. Raikkonen quickly rebuffed his critics, taking sixth place in the debut race of Formula 1 and confidently having spent the entire championship. He was able to draw attention to his person Ron Dennis, the owner of McLaren, who saw him as a likely successor, ending his career as two-time champion, Mick Hakkinen. And as it turned out, he, like Peter Sauber, was not mistaken in his choice.
Experts endlessly praised his uncompromising, straightforward, and largely unmistakable style. "I never think about what I'm doing. I just do it. And this is my job.", Kimi told reporters in a rare flash of introspection.
Career
His five seasons at McLaren coincided with a period of instability in the cars of the legendary stable. Nevertheless, he twice (2003 and 2005) took second place in the championship, won nine races and climbed the podium thirty-six times
In 2007, he transferred to Ferrari after being hired (reportedly for $ 41 million a year) to replace the world's sevenfold world champion Michael Schumacher.
After winning his debut Ferrari in Australia, Raikkonen controlled the course of the entire '07 season, waiting for the final Brazilian Grand Prix to regain leadership in the championship and snatch the Championship title from under the nose of previous McLaren employers. Alas, in 2008 he could not repeat the same trick and most of the season, he was a faithful squire of his partner Fellipe Massa.
At the end of the 2009 season, Raikkonen agreed to leave Ferrari, receiving compensation, despite the fact that his contract had not yet been completed to make way for Fernando Alonso.
Raikkonen then spent two years participating in the World Rally Championship and making one-off appearances in NASCAR trucks before announcing his return to F1. At the end of 2011 with the Lotus team.
From the moment he was back in the Formula 1 car, Raikkonen proved that his two-year vacation did not affect his ambition and speed.
In the hands of Raikkonen, the Lotus E20 turned out to be a stably fast car, Finn climbed the podium seven times and finished in all races. A well-deserved victory in Abu Dhabi summed up the almost perfect season in which he finished third in the championship.
He continued in the same style in 2013 with Lotus, brilliantly winning the first race in Australia and becoming a contender for the title after three second consecutive places in China, Bahrain and Spain. But alas, Lotus could not maintain such a crazy pace, and this, along with the financial problems of the team, led to the fact that Raikkonen signed a contract to return to Ferrari in 2014.
Unfortunately for the Finn, his first season after returning to Scuderia was disastrous. For the first time since his debut season in 2001, Raikkonen never managed to get on the podium, and he finished the season 106 points behind the outgoing teammate Fernando Alonso.
2015 was not much better, he could not win a single race and drank champagne only three times on the podium, while his new partner, Sebastian Vettel, won three races and climbed the podium thirteen times.
The following 2016-18 years, alas, only strengthened the status quo of the pilots in Maranelo, Vettel is unconditional "number one", and Kimi is his permanent squire, who will always help his partner if team tactics require this.
