Kimi Raikkonen has won his first ever rally with the Citroen Junior Team, finishing tops at the Rallye Vosgien which happened over the weekend. The ex-F1 champ and his Citroen C4 WRC was unbeaten on all six stages at the national-level French event.
It was held in the Strasbourg area, which is close to where the Rally of France, the next round of the WRC, will be held. “This was a good preparation for the Rally of France. From what I am told, the roads on this event were fairly representative of what we will see on the next WRC round, so I am happy. It’s also good to get back into driving the car on asphalt – that’s very useful as well,” said the Iceman. The Citroen Junior Team is unable to test ahead of the Rally of France having pre-assigned all of its 15 test days, so it the outing was fruitful.
On the Finn’s return to F1 via Renault, whether it goes through or not boils down to commercial reasons. While having Kimi on board will boost the team’s chances to fight for the title, Vitaly Petrov brings sponsorship money from his homeland and is a “window to Russia” for the brand.
“It’s very important (financial considerations). As I said, we use Formula 1, and we have to push our team to succeed because we use the platform to do business. And you know, it’s a question of image,” team chairman Gerard Lopez told Autosport.
“It’s not that Vitaly is a paying driver, because he’s not, but certainly the sponsors that he brought or that came, which is Lada, have been very good sponsors. And he’s a good driver. Vitaly was second in the GP2 championship last year and could easily have won that championship if he hadn’t had six failures last year.
“On top of all that, he is a driver that has 250 million Russian-speaking people that are convinced in him, so we’d be stupid not to assume that there is a business behind that. But we have to build the driver. He is to us a very important element, just as Robert is,” Lopez added.
Raikkonen vs Petrov is an easy choice if only talent is taken into account, but F1 is a business at the end of the day, which is why it won’t be that straightforward. Let’s see who prevails.
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Congrats! He is real a good driver
He is and i hope he comes back to F1 and wins. I hate to see him lose like schumacher
I’m not surprised that a former F1 champion can win a rally where only 3 of the participants used A8 rally cars and the second place won by an FWD non-turbo A7 kit car (Renault Clio Maxi) with much less torque.
Dear Spike, FYI, Kimi is the ONLY ex-F1 driver after _ _ _ _ _ (sorry i can’t remember the driver name) are able to score the point in WRC… and guess what… the famous US drifter which also debut in the WRC unable to score any single point…the Ken Block…
in WRC it is not that easy to give the statement that “I’m not surprised that a former F1 champion can win a rally”…
Hi, I am not exactly sure what you are getting at. What I meant was that in a rally when you have the most powerful rally car, with the support of a fully competent WRC manufacturers team as well as being an ex-F1 champion (what I meant here was that he may not necessarily have the skills, but he has the concentration and mental abilities demanding of a motorsport driver), I am not surprised that he can win the rally.
What would really surprise me is when he put up a competitive fight in WRC. The current WRC season has only about 10 A8 competitors and you could easily score points by not crashing/retiring. 5 years ago there would have been as much as 20 (and maybe more) competitors with Group A8 rally cars and things were much more competitive back then.
Granted, this is only his first season and I do not expect much from him anyway.
As for Ken Block, well, he may be able to pull off all the stunts he did but rallying is infinitely more difficult and variable. At 180kph it only takes a minor mistake to retire your car.
Kent Block was xgame gold medal(rally car)
he also surprice how WRC driver drove their cars haha..beyond imagination..
actually kimi not win the WRC .. only rally
There are 2 types of Rally drivers – the fast driver, or the consistant driver. Kimi could be considered a fast driver, but not consistant, as he had a lot of crashes and DNFs. Carlos Sainz, is an example of a consistant driver, but not too many wins.
To be a World Rally Champion, you have to be fast and consistant. That’s why Sebs Lobb is World rally champ 5 times already.
To be fair Kimi he new to rallying, and to achieve results most rally drivers would require 5-10 years in competitive racing.
The longer he stays away from F1, the more difficult he will find to cope with new machines and drivers, like what Schumi found out.
Off Topic.
Team Air Asia join GP2 grid in 2011. Source : http://www.autosport.com/news/report.php/id/86855
I Hope Kimi comes back! I think he is better for F1 and Kimi is bound to win a few races, and wins=money. If he is good enough, he will be able to make up for his huge salary! I prefer him to Petrov, and he is talented!