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crystalracing · 7 years

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Under the skin of the enigmatic Raikkonen

KIMI RAIKKONEN IS ONE OF THOSE BLOKES WHO polarises opinion, that people seem to either love or hate. Ironic really, considering he is the epitome of getting on with doing his own thing, not manipulating anything, staying clear of boring politics and not worrying about things he has no control over. As a private man who can be diﬃcult to read – not to mention one who a proportion of Formula 1 followers think has passed his best –he is, as our cover suggests, F1’s enigma. Which is why Ben Anderson’sin-depth 14-page feature, beginning on page 14, is probably the best and most-balanced thing you’ll ever read about him. Based on interviews with Raikkonen himself and those around him, it properly assesses his role on the F1 grid, and in the paddock. Ferrari announced a one-year contract extension for Raikkonen on Tuesday – after the last page of our feature had gone to press – but one thing for sure is that he is closer to the end of his F1 career than the beginning, and this week’s Autosport also provides a study of a talent at the opposite end of the spectrum. There hasn’t been a buzz this big about a young British prospect since Lewis Hamilton was rising the ranks, and Kevin Turner’s chat with Lando Norris (p28)tells us all about his cracking recent F1 test with McLaren. It was good timing that the interview coincides with two more wins in the Formula 3 European Championship at Zandvoort (p40). Funny to think that Norris hadn’t even been born when Raikkonen made his Formula Renault UK debut in 1999, and was only a toddler when Kimi ﬁrst raced a Formula 1 car…

“IF YOU STRUGGLE, PEOPLE SLAG YOU OFF, BUT IT DOESN’T BOTHER ME”

It is very rare that a driver comes along who challenges preconceived notions of what it takes to be a Formula 1 driver. But when a true prodigy breaks through into grand prix racing through sheer force of talent, they often create a sort of butterﬂy eﬀect.The world we thought we knew before is suddenly changed, and will never be the same again. Kimi Raikkonen should go down in F1 history as one such driver. It has taken Max Verstappen’s remarkable recent ascension to motorsport’s pinnacle to further redeﬁne the boundaries of possibility – so successful in one season of junior single-seater racing that he simply must be in F1 immediately. Since 2015, Verstappen has been thrilling fans, threatening reputations, and rewriting rules with his fearless and superlative brand of racing. Fourteen years earlier, Raikkonen laid the template –arriving with Peter Sauber’s eponymous team after a brief but highly successful stint in Formula Renault. Raikkonen had competed in fewer than 25 car races; surely he couldn’t be ready for such a monumental leap.Yet there he was – 13th on the grid for his debut in Australia, within four tenths of a second of sophomore team-mate Nick Heidfeld, scoring a point in his ﬁrst GP, ﬁnishing not much more than 12 seconds behind his team-mate. Raikkonen looked immediately like he belonged – a driver so naturally gifted he could bypass F3 and F3000 completely, turn convention on its head, yet be immediately and properly competitive in F1. Truly astounding. The question with all prodigies, in any sport, is what next? Will they fully harness that ability, show the necessary will and dedication to ally proper craft to their genius, and transform themselves into a truly unstoppable force? It is this unique blend that tends to deﬁne the ultimate greatness of an athlete – whether they burn out early and fade away in the Wayne Rooney style, or evolve into an era-deﬁning machine in the mould of Cristiano Ronaldo. Raikkonen’s stats suggest he’s something of an underachiever. This weekend’s Belgian Grand Prix will mark his 263rd grand prix start; only four drivers – Rubens Barrichello, Michael Schumacher, Jenson Button and Fernando Alonso – have started more. For a driver of Raikkonen’s ability and longevity to have scored ‘only’ 20 wins and 17 pole positions, plus a single world championship achieved in fortuitous circumstances in 2007, seems out of kilter. Damon Hill would not consider himself to be the most naturally gifted driver ever to grace F1. Raikkonen could make that claim, yet Hill achieved more wins and poles than Raikkonen has, in much less than half the number of starts. And yet Raikkonen is still good enough that he is still racing for Ferrari – F1’s grandest team – at the ripe old age of 37, and Tuesday’s announcement that he will remain for 2018 means he will continue doing so for another season at least. That shows Raikkonen still has something serious to oﬀer in the eyes of those who make the biggest decisions in Maranello. Sport is always about much more than pure numbers. Personality and style also count for as much sometimes. Raikkonen commands a strong and loyal fan base, energised by his ‘Iceman’ reputation, one he says he’s done nothing conscious to cultivate. Publicly, Raikkonen comes oﬀ as a cool, aloof, anti-hero character – a no-nonsense antidote to the clean-cut corporate image of modern racing. His ‘wild-child’ early years curry him huge favour with those followers of F1 who pine for the era of James Hunt, when drivers partied away the nights and drove by the seat of their pants in the day. But even lovable rogues like Hunt and Raikkonen are driven by a ﬁerce competitive instinct that belies their devil-may-care reputations.We are left with a confusing picture. How to reconcile the incredible natural ability that once redrew boundaries at Sauber and McLaren, and claimed a historic post-Schumacher world championship for Ferrari, with the later seasons of struggle: bettered by Felipe Massa, outpaced by Romain Grosjean, destroyed by Alonso, now playing second ﬁddle to Sebastian Vettel? Herein lies the enigma of Kimi Raikkonen.

BLAZING A TRAIL AT SAUBER

Raikkonen’s first season in F1 was very strong by conventional standards for a rookie, but when you consider his fundamental lack of experience in car racing it was truly exceptional. His results were very good – four points finishes in total, twice finishing fourth (in Austria and Canada) and placing inside the top 10 in the world championship. Raikkonen made a vital contribution to what then constituted Sauber’s best F1 season, but it was his raw speed that caught the eye. Third time out, Raikkonen qualified only a tenth behind Heidfeld in Brazil, and thereafter matched his more experienced team-mate 7-7 on Saturdays. Not only that, Raikkonen performed with a calm assuredness that belied his lack of experience. “Kimi was very young [21] and not experienced at all – it was very risky,” says Sauber driver trainer Josef Leberer, who worked with Ayrton Senna at McLaren and recalls his season alongside Raikkonen with fondness. “A lot of people said, ‘I don’t understand why Sauber were doing this’. But it worked. “He’s not the kind of guy who sits days and hours on the computer. Such an intuitive driver, his instinct is incredible. This way I would say he’s one of the best. It comes naturally. No bullshit. Just wanna be fast, no excuses. “He was not spoiled, so you could talk with him and be straightforward, and he was an incredible, cool guy. Doing the massage in the morning we had to wake him up and he said, ‘Let me get an extra five minutes of sleep before the race’. I’d never seen this – the second race in Malaysia and he wanted to sleep an extra few minutes! Can you imagine being like this in your second race? “He made such an impact. We had a feeling and he was fast immediately. You could see he had the requirements to be a top driver.” Raikkonen’s extraordinary ability to drive an F1 car quickly without the educational foundation enjoyed by his peers left a lasting impression on the paddock. Renowned motor racing journalist and author David Tremayne was Sauber’s press release writer during Raikkonen’s rookie campaign. He recalls a driver aloof and reserved in public, but completely different when hidden from the glare of a camera lens. “He was very quiet, like he is now,” explains Tremayne. “You thought, ‘What is this kid like, is he going to be another Mika [Hakkinen]?’ But he clearly wasn’t in terms of the way he conducted himself – he wasn’t forthcoming. Kimi didn’t want to do any of the other bollocks. He wanted to get in the car and get on with it. “[But] at Monza I heard all this raucous laughter on top of the media bus at Sauber. I went downstairs and it was Kimi, Peter Collins, and a guy who turned out to be Kimi’s kart mechanic – and it was Kimi doing all the laughing. “It was the only time I ever saw what you might call ‘the real Kimi’– with mates, completely relaxed, no need to be protective of anything.

I think he has the ability to compartmentalise. There was a lot of fire in him but you didn’t get to see it. He’s very self-reliant. I don’t think he needs an entourage. “As a driver, he was wonderful to watch. Felipe came in the following year and he was quick but always on a different line. Kimi was just cool and calm with it – not pushing the car or wrestling with it.”So many drivers dream of being world champion, work hard to achieve that dream, but never even make it onto the grid. Others carve out opportunity but become overwhelmed by expectation or consumed by pressure. It seems Raikkonen benefited not only from exceptional natural ability behind the wheel – after all there are many drivers who share that sort of skill – but also a mental resilience and confidence that helped strip away the extra burdens that might have destroyed someone of a different character. Raikkonen never dreamed big or got carried away by the prospect of fame and fortune. It seems it was this aloof attitude, bordering on indifference, that made him so perfectly suited to thrive in F1. “It was a good team to be in; nice people – I still have lunch there,” Raikkonen tells Autosport, relaxing into his seat as we discuss the first stage of his long career in F1. “For me, it was very easy in someways because I didn’t really expect anything.“I didn’t know anything about F1. I never went to see a race. The first time I saw it live was when I was in a test myself. So for me it was like if you just go to Formula Renault [for the first time]. I had nothing to worry about – what’s the point? It either goes well or it goes bad. What can you do?” Ultimately, it went very well indeed for Raikkonen, who made such an impression that he was poached by Ron Dennis to replace retiring double world champion Hakkinen at McLaren for 2002. Even a wunderkind like Verstappen had to wait four races into his second season before earning promotion to one of F1’s biggest teams…

McLAREN: WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN

Some paddock insiders consider Raikkonen’s five-year stint at McLaren to be his absolute peak. His first grand prix victory at Malaysia in 2003 briefly made him F1’s youngest winner since team founder Bruce McLaren. Raikkonen won eight more times for McLaren in those five seasons, as well as taking 11 pole positions and 36 podiums from 87 starts. He quickly established himself as one of grand prix racing’s most exciting stars, but a world championship title eluded him. He was second to Alonso in 2005, but came closest to breaking through two years earlier, when Raikkonen lost out to Schumacher by just two points. “Back in those days he was massively quick,” recalls Pat Fry, McLaren’s chief engineer during Raikkonen’s stint with the team. “It’s a shame car reliability and engine reliability didn’t work for him really. If you look at him through the early 2000s, he was right up there with the best, wasn’t he? He was absolutely outstanding driving the McLaren through 2003, 2005. He should’ve won the championship in 2005.” Raikkonen was unfortunate in that his time at McLaren coincided with Schumacher’s most dominant seasons at Ferrari and latterly the brief but potent rise of Alonso at Renault. Only once during that period, in ’05, could McLaren be considered to have produced the absolute quickest car on the grid, and senior personnel admit it was too unreliable to ultimately get the job done. In this context, Raikkonen achieved much of his success against the odds. Apart from his first year with the team in 2002 – when he was paired alongside stalwart David Coulthard – Raikkonen was never beaten by his McLaren team-mate across a season. He won many admirers inside the squad for his fearless style of racing. “He was blindingly quick – sometimes the circuit wasn’t big enough to contain him in those early days, but he was pushing to the max and everyone liked it,” remembers McLaren’s chief operating oﬀicer Jonathan Neale. “He used to scare me. He scared me because he was so completely fearless. You just knew there was no way he was going to give anything less than 110%, and I don’t mean that lightly. He was just a force of nature.” Out of the car, McLaren found a “completely uncompromising” driver, whose “maverick” style didn’t always sit well with the team’s clean-cut corporate image. “We struggled to find out who he was as he didn’t say very much,” adds Neale. “[But] everybody underestimates him at their peril. He did have a fantastic sense of humour. If there were two drivers going on stage, to do a presentation or a question-and-answer session, he’d be sitting in the back and he’d do an amazing mimic. He had the voices and the phrases, all of that, so he was a sharp observer. “There was never a dull moment, but he was a great racer –somebody who is still spoken of highly in the team for what did with us, for us, and the style in which he did it, which was uncompromising. It was uncompromising in the car, it was uncompromising in the set-up, he was uncompromising on whether he wanted to be with a sponsor. It’s not always easy, but isn’t it refreshing when you find somebody who is brave enough to be candid and frank and not prepared to cower to conformity?

“He wouldn’t suﬀer fools. Everyone was taken at face value, no airs, no graces, nobody standing on ceremony, what you see is what get, very grounded, but enormous following with the mechanics and engineers – real loyalty. “Because that fire burns very intensely, it was kind of polarising –either you got it or you didn’t. It is quite diﬀicult getting engineers close to him – to be able to have that rapport and reach him without being too much, too little, not a fool. “Any whiﬀ of bullshit and you were toast! But [race engineer] Mark Slade was very good with Kimi and they had an understanding. Mark knew when to leave him alone, and when to push him and there were occasions when Mark was quite assertive with him, but because he built up that trust he could be. It is easy to be intimidated by somebody of that temperament.” Slade has worked with Raikkonen twice through the Finn’s F1 career – first at McLaren and later at Lotus. Slade responded well to Raikkonen’s no-nonsense attitude and fussiness for precision. He says the Raikkonen that drove for McLaren arrived at Woking “well-rounded” and was “massively impressive”. “He knew how to manage tyres, he knew how to set up the car – it was like working with someone who’d done it for five years,” Slade recalls. “He knew exactly what he wanted. It was not like working with a new driver. “The only aspect that was a little bit ragged early on was in qualifying, when we had to put the fuel in the car for the race, so 2003. He had a little bit of a tendency to want to be on pole regardless of the amount of fuel in the car. And there were a couple of races where he went oﬀ trying to achieve too much. “We basically banned him from watching the other drivers’qualifying laps. We just told him, ‘Go out and drive the car as quickly as it will go’. We did that for the rest of this season and he didn’t do any more mistakes.” Raikkonen is often portrayed as a lazy driver – someone who simply relies on his natural feel for the car but isn’t particularly interested in doing anything other than driving. Slade argues that’s a misunderstanding of Raikkonen’s approach. It’s not that he is uninterested, rather that he sees clear delineation in responsibilities within teams, and wants to trust those around him to do their jobs properly without interference. Slade admits this approach can compromise Raikkonen when internal politics arise.

“There were times at McLaren when things didn’t go the way they should have for Kimi and if he had been just a little bit more involved, that could have swapped things around a bit,” Slade says. “In the middle of 2005 there were certain things happening with the design direction of the car that didn’t suit Kimi and there was a lot of tension and pressure. I was having to fight Kimi’s corner, because he wasn’t really doing much himself. That was quite stressful. “He didn’t like hanging around in the oﬀice for very long. His debriefs were very short, but he gave us the important points and that was almost perfect for me, because it meant we didn’t spend lots of time talking about what was not relevant. He won’t rant about it. It’s just, ‘That’s what we need to fix’. Simple as that. “If people try to push him in a diﬀerent direction, it’s not going to work because you need him on board. You need to be on board with him and he needs to be on board with you. For me, it was enjoyable to work with him, because it was logical and straightforward. “One of the biggest diﬀiculties with drivers who are less consistent with their approach is trying to filter out this inconsistency. It becomes very diﬀicult very quickly. If he came in saying there’s something wrong with the car, the chances are there’s something wrong with the car – even if you can’t see that on data. Ninety-nine percent of the time he’s right. “When we were doing Michelin tyre testing, they desperately wanted him to do the testing. They told us at one point that he was the best test driver that they worked with. They used to give a little array of tick boxes for diﬀerent characteristics of the tyre – what the tyres were doing, what the characteristics of the diﬀerent compounds were. They said there were some drivers who got most of the points correct, but he always got them all correct. “And his consistency of lap time when we tested eight diﬀerent compounds – his baselines would be within one tenth, and that meant that they could properly analyse the lap time data as well as the driver’s comments.” Slade says he’s never seen anything else like Raikkonen’s “extraordinary level of sensitivity” to the car, to the point where Raikkonen could detect problems with McLaren’s traction control so aware the engineers couldn’t see in their trackside data. The chase for a ‘perfect car’ can be a real curse when too many things aren’t working correctly, but this degree of feel made Raikkonen a formidable weapon during F1’s tyre war between Bridgestone and Michelin. “That played a big part of how it went,” says Raikkonen. “I was very happy to do the tyre tests. We could test 20 diﬀerent sets of tyres and choose exactly what you wanted, whatever you feel is best for you. It was one extra thing that you could use.” Raikkonen does not agree with those, such as Williams technical chief Paddy Lowe, who would say his McLaren years represent Raikkonen at his peak. But he was certainly unfortunate not to win at least one world title with McLaren, and Slade recalls some truly stunning drives by Raikkonen during that period. “No doubt Michael, Fernando and Kimi were the three guys,” argues Slade, who feels Raikkonen could have won “15 straight races” in 2005 with better reliability. “Then, just slightly behind, DC, [Juan Pablo] Montoya and a few others. When it came to the driving and his racecraft, Kimi was right up there.“In the middle part of the [2005] season the car was phenomenal and he was driving phenomenally well. At Monza, he qualified fastest with the full tank of fuel [before a grid penalty]; at Silverstone, he was half a second per lap quicker than Montoya, who won the race; in France he started 13th and finished second. Japan was awesome because he came from the back and won. “One of the best races he ever did was Indianapolis in 2003, when we were on the Michelin wets and the Michelin wets were rubbish. He finished second. It was fantastic. He just drove his heart out. He didn’t win the race, but it was an absolutely phenomenal drive. “Nurburgring 2006 – the engine was terrible that year and he finished fourth. I remember him coming to the bus afterwards, sweat pouring oﬀ him, and he said, ‘I just drove 60 qualifying laps’, and you could see he had. We knew he had to drive phenomenally well to achieve that with the car we had then.” By now Raikkonen had grown increasingly frustrated with life at McLaren and reputedly made an agreement with Ferrari as early as late-2005 to join the Scuderia for 2007. “He signed with Ferrari two years before he moved to Ferrari,” confirms his then-Ferrari team-mate Massa. “I remember when I signed for Ferrari, Kimi already has his contract; the only way I stay in Ferrari is if Michael stops.” Schumacher announced his first retirement from F1 after winning the 2006 Italian GP at Monza. Thus, the way was clear for Raikkonen and Massa to usher in a new era at Maranello.

MARK SLADE RAIKKONEN’S ENGINEER AT McLAREN AND LOTUS

Does Kimi have particular traits in his driving? He’s very, very smooth, very gentle, very precise – minimal inputs into the car. He wants the car to do the work. Most drivers tend to be a bit more aggressive with inputs, which can have beneﬁts when the tyres are hard and difficult to get into the working window. The other thing is power steering. He came to us and complained about power steering. We spent a lot of time ﬁxing it. Then he went to Ferrari and apparently complained about power steering there. Then he came back to Lotus and complained about power steering. So the feel of the steering is very, very important. He doesn’t want any friction in it. He doesn’t want any play on the brake pedal. Also, Mark [Arnall] always carried a special cloth to clean the windscreen, because if there was a slightest ﬁnger print or scratch, we had to change it.

He says he hates understeer and you often hear him complain about the front… Even at McLaren there were occasions where we did have issues. Canada was a good one in 2005. We were slower on new tyres than on used tyres because he couldn’t get the new tyre temperature to work. The start of the lap can be a real problem if he just hasn’t got the front grip that he needs to get the car into corners. I would say that’s probably the only real weakness. There were times also that was an advantage, because he was a lot more gentle on tyres. When we won the race with Lotus in 2013 in Melbourne, he just walked away with it because he could do one stop. Those tyres were absolutely perfect for him, then Pirelli changed the tyres and that disadvantaged him unfortunately.

Why does he often seem to make mistakes in qualifying? He takes a high-risk approach to qualifying. It’s all about corner entry speed. And if you get the corner wrong you tend to drop a lot of time. Other drivers probably prioritise the exit a little bit more. He’s trying to carry speed through; that is high risk.

WORLD CHAMPION THEN DITCHED BY FERRARI

Raikkonen’s Ferrari career got off to a dream start – pole position and victory in his first race in Melbourne, and of course he went on to claim the championship as Ferrari backed his bid to overhaul the McLarens of Alonso and rookie sensation Lewis Hamilton. Raikkonen succeeded in this mission by a solitary point when team-mate Massa moved aside for him to win the season finale in Brazil.“For me it counts much more than any others – if I had won with McLaren or with somebody else,” Raikkonen says. “Ferrari is Ferrari.I got close a few times in the McLaren. I mean yes in some people’s eyes I [could] have won three championships. I didn’t deserve it.In the end, whoever gets the most points deserves it. “Would I be happier with three championships? It makes no diﬀerence. I am happy with what I have achieved.” It felt as though F1 almost owed Raikkonen that championship– regardless of the peculiar circumstances – as payback for the disappointment and near-misses at McLaren. But although he finally conquered the world in his first season as a Ferrari driver, Raikkonen never fully established himself as the team’s number one. Raikkonen says his biggest concern before coming to Ferrari was having to adjust to Bridgestone tyres after years spent honing his car on Michelin rubber, but according to Rob Smedley – Massa’s race engineer throughout Raikkonen’s first stint at Ferrari – the tyres were “never the limiting factor” for Raikkonen during this period.“In terms of raw talent he definitely was one of the best drivers on the grid when he came to us,” Smedley says. “[But] he very much needs a particular set-up. He needs the front to work for him very positively. He turns the car in very early, a little bit like Michael, like Fernando, like Valtteri [Bottas]. They turn very early in the corner, and due to that he’s very demanding on the front-end in that phase of the corner.“He needs to start sending the car into the apex almost immediately when he starts thinking about the corner, especially in medium-speed corners. When he first came to us, it took us a longtime to understand what he wanted. “He’s the driver who, probably the most I’ve ever seen of anyone, is absolutely and entirely unfazed by rear locking at the start of heavy braking. To be able to deal with that and not to be fazed by that is something quite incredible. “We spent a lot of our time in that winter of 2007 attempting to understand how on earth he was putting the brake balance so far rearward. He was running probably 8% more rearward than Felipe and the other drivers – that’s another planet. “We were quite surprised by that, but actually what he was trying to do, in his own way, was to make the car turn as soon as he asked for it.As soon as he asked for response out of the steering, he wanted the car to turn. He had a particular way of driving the car and I think it took us a little bit of time to understand that. Once we did, we got performance from him.” But not consistently. Raikkonen was closely matched with Massa through most of 2007, but would likely have been asked to support his team-mate’s own bid for the championship had Massa not suffered a damper failure while running ahead of Raikkonen in that year’s Italian GP – and narrowly leading Raikkonen in the standings. Massa, who describes Raikkonen as “for sure one of the strangest people I’ve met”, was a fan of the Finn’s honesty as a team-mate, but rates Schumacher and Alonso higher: “Definitely Michael and Fernando were stronger – not quicker, but more complete.” The following year Raikkonen was cast into the supporting role, as his title defence fell apart amid a run of four consecutive non-scoring races in the second half of the season. Massa was unlucky not to become world champion in ’08 and was Ferrari’s leading driver through the first part of a difficult 2009 campaign too, before he suffered a terrible head injury during qualifying for the Hungarian GP. “We never were really comfortable – like if you drive and you have to try and do things that are not normal,” says Raikkonen of his first stint at Ferrari. “We never really found it and put things together. We changed the cars a little bit, but we just struggled compared to what we did in the first bit.” Raikkonen showed flashes of form in a very difficult 2009 Ferrari, which was not a strong answer to the regulatory upheaval of the previous winter. He qualified on the front row and finished third at Monaco, but he wasn’t proving so relentlessly impressive as he had done in his McLaren years– against a team-mate not rated as one of the absolute best on the grid.

“In ’08 Felipe was still in the stage of rapid improvement and overall Felipe was pretty much quicker than him, definitely in qualifying,” adds Smedley, who reckons Raikkonen’s “pure natural talent” made him better than Massa at looking after the rear tyres in races.“That was one of the things that really surprised me, because I expected him to come in and be blisteringly quick but not really manage things in such a mechanically sympathetic way, and in fact the opposite was true. One of the strengths he’s always got is that he can take the tyres further than anybody else and, wherever he goes, the team tries to exploit that.“It’s never a matter of application with Kimi – you just plug him in and he just does it. You often wonder [what would happen] if he had the level of application of others with his level of natural skill and tenacity, [but] one thing you can say about him is that he doesn’t bring any politics. The guy is absolutely apolitical.“I think that comes a little bit from not being interested in this world. The thing that is really important to him is going racing on a Sunday afternoon, qualifying, trying to be better than anybody else. And all the other periphery bits do not interest him. “And that’s kind of where he probably differs to 99.9% of the rest of us in F1. You wake up thinking about it, you go to sleep thinking about it – much to the annoyance of my wife! But that’s how we are– constantly striving to do better and be the best. I don’t think Kimi has that. I mean, he likes it here, he comes and drives his car, then he goes home, and doesn’t think about it a great deal after that.” The feeling inside Ferrari was that Massa was establishing himself as the quicker driver, and that messed with Raikkonen’s head. Raikkonen’s form certainly picked up following Massa’s accident. Kimi was on the podium at Budapest, Valencia and Monza, and beat Giancarlo Fisichella’s Force India to victory at Spa. His performances were made to look all the more remarkable by how badly Massa’s stand-ins Luca Badoer (who qualified slowest of all at Valencia and Spa) and Fisichella (who took over after Spa) struggled. But it wasn’t enough for Ferrari, which elected to pay Raikkonen out of the final two years of his contract to bring Alonso on board for 2010. Raikkonen is still guarded about the events that unfolded behind closed doors at Maranello, but says he was keen to get out of F1 in any case. “I have nothing to hide really,” says Raikkonen, who originally never planned for a long career in F1. “That’s how it played out and I was happy at that point to say, ‘OK, that’s fine and I’ll go’. Honestly, somethings happen in life and I didn’t feel bad about it. Obviously, I had a contract, but that got dealt with. They obviously wanted something else at that point, and for me that’s how it goes sometimes. I wanted to do something else anyhow.”

RETURN FROM THE WILDERNESS

Raikkonen was temporarily done with F1, but F1 wasn’t done with him. Throughout his two-year stint experimenting in the World Rally Championship, proposals were made for his return. Eventually, Raikkonen realised he missed the joy of wheel-to-wheel competition so began thinking seriously about a comeback. He held talks with Williams – “I had a meeting with Toto [Wolﬀ]; he came to my home” – and Lotus, before opting to make his comeback with the Enstone outfit.“The year before I got people asking me if I wanted to come back– there was a lot of talk but I felt if I want to come back I needed to have a current team that people will at least try to put the money into,” Raikkonen explains. “I didn’t need the money, but I wanted a car and a team that actually had some chances to do something good, rather than just being there.”Raikkonen enjoyed a superb first season with Lotus. He finished every one of the 20 races held in 2012, was on the podium seven times, and claimed a victory in Abu Dhabi – the infamous GP where he told the team to “leave me alone I know what I’m doing” over the radio while preparing for a safety car restart.Then-Lotus team principal Eric Boullier recalls a driver who was“a bit rusty over one lap” at first, but “brilliant” in the races, despite spending two seasons out of the game.“His capability and racecraft was amazing,” recalls Boullier.“The good thing for him [was] he had Grosjean near to him, and he [Grosjean] was very fast on one lap but not as good [overall].The most amazing thing about Kimi is he has a great understanding.He has a GPS in his head. He’s doing his own strategy, it’s amazing. ”Boullier recalls the 2012 Hungarian GP as the perfect example of Raikkonen’s craft, where the Finn came from the third row of the grid to beat Grosjean (who qualified on the front row) to second by saving his tyres and running longer in each stint. “You just have to guess sometimes what he wants, because he’snot the best communicator in the world,” Boullier adds. “Kimi gets quite stressed sometimes; he needs people who understand him and can handle him.“He is charismatic – actually, his charisma is strong enough to make people fans of him. What would be better would be to have more motivation to push people around him. He’s not as complete as maybe a Vettel, but he is a great driver. Some drivers need support. He’s one of the guys who can do it on his own. He’s incredibly talented.“He’s quite easy [to work with] to be honest – as long as you give him space to breathe and you’re not on his back all the time.

That was key – to let him live his life. ”Reuniting Raikkonen with Slade (who came across from Mercedes to work with Kimi again) also proved crucial in helping Raikkonen get the most from his comeback, and Lotus get the best out of Raikkonen. “When he first came back, he was really enthusiastic,” remembers Slade. “Unfortunately, he got messed around a bit on the salary side of things. That was an annoyance, but in terms of the driving, I felt he was still exactly the same. I don’t think it’s any secret that he’snot a big fan of the F1 paddock scene and the stuﬀ that goes with it.”It seemed those two seasons of F1, racing on the most extremely fragile rubber of the Pirelli control tyre era, also suited Raikkonen’s particular skillset. Often he would score a big result by making fewer pitstops than his rivals, but Raikkonen himself reckons the design of that generation of Lotus – conceived by James Allison’s team around the Renault V8 engine and exhaust-blown downforce – made more of a difference, giving him the “pure front-end” grip he needs to drive well. Whatever, the combination gelled superbly. Raikkonen added eight more podiums to his tally in 2013, winning the first race of the season in Melbourne and finishing second six times. An unfortunate retirement at Spa that year (thanks to a visor tear-off blocking a brake duct) broke an incredible run of 27 consecutive points finishes stretching back to the Bahrain GP of 2012. “He’s relentless,” says Slade. “I’d say Fernando is the closest in terms of achieving consistent results.” But into the latter part of 2013, Grosjean began to establish himself as the stronger and generally faster of the two Lotus drivers,even though he was twice defeated by Raikkonen overall in the championship. Grosjean describes Raikkonen as “the perfect benchmark” and says he learned a lot from racing alongside the Finn. “As team-mates we didn’t talk much – maybe three times in two years!” Grosjean says. “Everybody thinks he doesn’t give a shit; he actually does. He works. Same as Fernando – the only thing he thinks on Sunday is 2pm, how to get the car to where he wants it to go.“Once I had a rear soft spring for a race and Kimi tried it and liked it. He was pushing to get the springs. He was trying even though you think he doesn’t [care]. It was interesting that everybody thinks he [just] comes and drives the car and goes. He actually works. ”Their head-to-head record as team-mates is also skewed slightly by the fact Raikkonen skipped the final two races of 2013 – quitting the team over a financial dispute and electing to have surgery on a long-standing back injury, legacy of a testing accident during his first season in F1 at Sauber. “Unfortunately the whole thing [was] destroyed by people that, in my mind, were just stupid to be honest,” Raikkonen says. “They had a great thing on their hands. “It’s not my business, but I left there purely because I didn’t get paid. Without it, who knows? But then obviously I got the oﬀer from Ferrari. I never had a bad feeling with them when I left, despite people thinking that. You know how people always think it will end in a mess, but they oﬀered me a new deal and I went back.”

WHY RAIKKONEN OWES HIS SECOND F1 CAREER TO RALLYING AND NASCAR

Kimi Raikkonen’s two-year sabbatical from F1 in 2010-2011 led him to try his hand at other forms of motorsport he’d long wished to dabble in but never had the time to do so while fully absorbed into grand prix racing’s goldﬁsh bowl. Having sampled Rally Finland in the summer of 2009, Raikkonen contested most of the 2010 World Rally Championship as part of the Citroen Junior Team, and nine rounds of the 2011 championship with a DS 3 run under his own ‘Ice 1 Racing’ banner. There were many incidents, but also many top 10s. “I always wanted to try the rally stuff, because it looks so difficult,”says Raikkonen. “I wanted to see how it would go and I was happy to have the help from Red Bull to do it. I still think it’s a great sport, it’s so difficult. The problem is that it needs time – experience counts a lot more in rallying than in circuit racing.“In rallying you have to put the same effort in driving, but you [also] have to listen to your co-driver. The most difficult thing is that you have to think about what he says and then react. That takes too much time. When that starts to happen automatically then you can go faster, then it gets easier.I was close to getting to that point,then things happened and I ended up back in F1. ”Raikkonen also travelled Stateside in 2011, to try his hand at NASCAR. He contested the lower-tier Nationwide and Truck series races at Charlotte, qualifying mid-pack for his Nationwide outing.It was this experience that reﬁred Raikkonen’s enthusiasm for circuit racing and accelerated his F1 return. “Without that happening then I would deﬁnitely not be here today,”he says. “I would never have lasted this long if I hadn’t had a few years doing something else, trying things.

MARANELLO COMEBACK

It was during Raikkonen’s financial dispute with Lotus that he agreed a two-year deal to return to Maranello. Initially, it looked as though signing Raikkonen was the perfect insurance policy for Ferrari,which seemed in danger of losing Alonso after failing to carry the fight to Vettel and Red Bull in 2013. But despite publicly criticising the team and being admonished by company president Luca di Montezemolo, Alonso stayed put (for the moment) and he and Raikkonen became team-mates for 2014, as Massa departed for a fresh start at Williams. Raikkonen’s first season back at the Scuderia was a real struggle.The first year of F1’s current V6 hybrid turbo era was Ferrari’s least competitive since 1993. The car was bad, Raikkonen couldn’t adapt it to his driving style, and was demolished in the championship by Alonso, 161 points to 55. Jonathan Neale recalls how McLaren found its suspension development pulled “in two different directions” owing to Raikkonen’s demand for instant steering response from its cars, and Pat Fry, who was Ferrari’s chief engineer when Raikkonen returned in 2014, found his team coming up against an age-old problem – one exacerbated by stiff and hard Pirelli tyres that Raikkonen often struggled to get working for a single flying lap in qualifying. “He has a very smooth driving style – you’ve got to get rid of the understeer in the car,” says Fry. “You can obviously play around with suspension geometries and stuff like that to try and give him the feel,and sort out power-steering and all that stuff. ”The process was made trickier by Alonso’s long-standing presence as Ferrari’s number one driver, which inevitably led the team in a development direction that suited Alonso, before he departed for the ill-fated McLaren-Honda project.“In all the years I’ve worked with Kimi, the year I saw him struggle the most was that first year back at Ferrari,” says his long-time trainer Mark Arnall. “Coming from Lotus, where he had a good front-end on the car and had podium after podium after podium, it’s not like he suddenly forgot how to drive – he just couldn’t get a balance with that 2014 car.” But Raikkonen commanded the faith of technical director James Allison, with whom he worked at Lotus previously, and knew that he would have to play the long game at Ferrari to get back to where he needed to be.“I knew what I was getting into,” Raikkonen says. “With the engineers, I wouldn’t say they were bad – maybe the fit wasn’t what I wanted. It just didn’t work, I suppose, and our car was not very good.

“The front end has to be right there. If it’s not right, it’s not right,unfortunately. When it’s right things are very easy. Even when you have a good year, it’s a little percentage that’s perfect. There’s always something. There’s so many things that you have no control over.“Some days everything goes perfectly fine, and some days whatever you do it seems to be against you, but I’ve been long enough in the sport to know it. People look at you in one race and if you struggle they slag you off, but I’m used to it so it doesn’t bother me too much.“I want myself to do well and I know what I can do. That’s more important for me. Obviously, it’s not nice when you are in a team like Ferrari and the results are not coming, [but] I had no issues with them and I knew that things would turn out to be just fine with time. It just took some patience.” Raikkonen’s form has gradually improved since that annus horribilis, during which time the Ferrari senior management has changed, the technical structure has changed, the identity of his team-mate has changed, and so has his engineering group. Drafting in Dave Greenwood as his race engineer at the end of 2014 has made a massive difference for Raikkonen. “The car has been getting better and better every year, and a big part for me has been the people,” Raikkonen explains. “Dave is for sure one of the greatest guys that I have ever worked with. I would compare him with Slade – I very highly rate them. “For me it’s important that when we do something, everything has to be exactly like it should be. A very easy example: the ride height,if it’s [supposed] to be 20mm, it has to be 20mm; it can’t be 21mm or 19mm.“When everything is ‘close enough’, and you have five or six things like that, we all know in F1 how much difference small things make,then suddenly the lap time is not so perfect anymore.”Vettel has generally outperformed Raikkonen since arriving at Maranello in 2015, but their similar set-up demands and harmonious working relationship is helping drive Ferrari’s development in a single direction, and the Scuderia is now finally carrying the fight to Mercedes in the world championship – though it is Vettel leading the charge rather than Raikkonen. “Of all F1 drivers, he is probably closer to him [Vettel] than any of the others,” says Arnall, who arranged for Vettel to travel with Raikkonen on a private jet when Vettel was first in F1, and recalls Vettel’s rapid progression playing badminton against Raikkonen. “Kimi always liked Seb and I think Seb always liked Kimi. They are good friends – as much as you can be in this sort of environment. “The thing about Kimi is that he is not political at all, so I think to be a team-mate of, he is actually very easy as he doesn’t stir up any shit in the background – he is very transparent. Harmony in the team is something that is massively underrated. It makes a huge difference.”Paired alongside Vettel, Raikkonen’s own performances have steadily improved too, to the point where he has earned three contract extensions, which will keep him in F1 until after his 39th birthday.Questions about his ultimate speed and consistency remain, though, stoked further by occasional criticism from Ferrari president Sergio Marchionne, who has described Raikkonen as an occasional “laggard” in races. But Raikkonen’s pole position in Monaco proves he can still be faster than anyone when things are right, and his pernickety obsession with car set-up and tyre behaviour, plus the deep levels of valuable experience from F1’s tyre war era he can bring to bear in an age of severely limited testing, make him a valuable commodity, even if the price is the odd lacklustre performance.“I think Kimi is one of those guys that if he thought, ‘I just can’t drive one of these cars as quick as I used to’, he would stop,” reckons Arnall. “Kimi brings a shit load of experience,he’s very good with the development of the car, very non-political, an easy team-mate for people to have, so I think as an overall package,he is [still] very good.“I think his belief is that he can still compete near the top. He is very honest with himself – if he didn’t think that was the case, he’d stop.”Many would argue that he should have stopped a while ago, that his continuing presence on the grid, in such a coveted seat, is baﬀling when you consider he hasn’t been definitively quicker than any of his last four team-mates in F1. But what does Raikkonen himself think – does he believe he is as good a driver now as he ever was? “That’s so hard to say,” he replies. “I feel that I can drive as well as 2007 and 2001, or whatever people think has been my best ever [year]. For me, if I didn’t feel that I can drive well, or couldn’t win races or championships, I wouldn’t be here, because I don’t have interest to waste my own time and everyone else’s time. “I value my own time too much to use it on something that I wouldn’t be happy with, or that I wouldn’t think that I can actually do well. Plus, all the other people who would waste their time and money or on something that I just want to be part of. It’s not the most friendly place to be if you don’t really want to be…” That Ferrari continues to place its faith in Raikkonen suggests it feels, beyond the headline results and numbers, that he is still fundamentally among the very best drivers in the world, and that it recognises those deeper layers of style, character, substance and ability that make Raikkonen something more than the sum of his parts. He is enigmatic and mercurial, hasn’t been world champion for a decade, but clearly possesses extra qualities that F1’s biggest team finds are still worth investing in. He may lack the single-minded dedication of some of his peers,he may not be the out-and-out fastest driver on the grid anymore, he may well be too Button-esque in his over-reliance on particular car characteristics to drive quickly. He may not be as adaptable as some of his rivals, and F1 may only be a job to him, rather than an all-consuming obsession – but what’s wrong with being naturally gifted enough at your job that you don’t feel the need to take your work home with you every day?His critics will argue that’s not good enough, that Raikkonen has long outstayed his welcome. If Ferrari hands him another contract extension, they will no doubt be outraged if this enigma is given yet another lease of life. But one thing is for sure, Raikkonen will not care what they think. “I can live my life very happy,” Raikkonen says. “Obviously, my aim is to win races and I’m not happy when I’m not doing well. My biggest issue when I’m getting older is that I care too much. In the past, I didn’t care much. Now, when I have a bad weekend it’s more painful because I care more. Before it was still painful, but I got over it very quickly. “I never tried to be anything else than myself. If people like it, that’s good; if people don’t like it, that’s fine. As long as I’m happy what I’m doing, that’s my only interest. I’m not trying to please people because then I don’t live my life as I should. I live my life for myself. “I always said I have a life and that F1 is just a part of that. It’s not like F1 is all your life and then you have nothing. In my mind, I have the opposite. I mean F1, yes I love it and I enjoy doing it, but it’s not my life. My life is outside of it, and that’s how it should be.”

MARK ARNALL- RAIKKONEN’S LONG-TIME PERSONAL TRAINER

How does the Kimi of now compare to the Kimi you ﬁrst knew back in 2001?

He didn’t really care too much about the PR stuff, he wasn’t interested in that glamour side of it, being famous, I think he would much rather be anonymous! Every time he got in the car all he wanted to do was drive the crap out of it. When I started working with him, I could never imagine him being a father. Now seeing him with two kids is a phenomenal transformation. He is fantastic dad. I think all drivers, everyone learns, go through life and grow; experience teaches a lot. If you look at Kimi, the PR stuff he does now and what the sponsors say, everyone is super happy with him, and he’s got a global following of fans.

He doesn’t give much away in public; is he a shy character?

I think that mysterious side to him is intriguing for people. I don’t think he is particularly shy – the whole fan side of things,he obviously understands Formula 1, knows he is a popular driver, but it is not something he deliberately tries to play to, he just tries to get on with the job and what comes with it comes with it. One area he is very good is with kids. There was a guy who come up to me in Spa once, with this charity, to say this girl has cancer and she’d just love a picture with him or to say ‘hi’, and he spent 25 minutes sitting down and talking to her.

Is he quite a diﬃcult character to work with? He polarises opinion – some people get him and say he is brilliant,others say he is completely closed oﬀ, diﬃcult to work with…

The nicest thing I’d say about Kimi is what you see is what you get. Zero bullshit, zero politics. Kimi’s always been his own character and will always make his own decisions. He’s got a very strong head on those shoulders, so if he doesn’t want to do something, it is really difficult to get him to do it.

It sounds like he is not too demanding, quite independent and knows his own mind.

That is quite an accurate description of what he is like. I think he is probably the opposite to what most people think. If I was to describe Kimi, it would be ‘Mr 110%’. Goes into the gym and goes 110%. If he is lying on his sofa, he’ll go 110% horizontal! When he drives anything, it would be 110%, if he goes out it is 110%. I think that is just the way he lives his life.

The public persona is the ‘Iceman’: cool, disinterested, closed-off. Is he really like that?

In most situations, he is like that, but Kimi is actually a very warm, big-hearted character, and he has got a phenomenal sense of humour, but that is not really something people see. He needs to like people as well. If he doesn’t particularly like being with someone, he doesn’t do anything other than just ignore them.There is no bullshit, if he doesn’t like someone, he is quite straight about it. I think I’ve seen all the different versions of him, but I wouldn’t carry on working with him if I thought he was an arse. I actually really like him. I think he is super genuine, superkind. That is something people don’t really see so much.

#Kimi Raikkonen #raikkonen #f1 humor #F1 News #F1 #Formula One #Formula 1 #sauber #mclaren #Scuderia Ferrari #ferrari #mark arnall #mark slade

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20. Josef Newgarden

After finishing runner-up in British Formula Ford in 2009, Newgarden had his fingers burnt in the inaugural GP3 series in 2010 when average results and a lack of funding left his F1 dream in tatters. A return Stateside in 2011 saw him crowned Indy Lights champion and, over the next decade, become a two-time IndyCar champion.

He’s never denied the strong allure of a switch to Formula 1: “I’d [still] like to do it,” he told the New York Times just 10 days ago. But with a plum seat his at Team Penske, we can’t see him taking the leap anytime soon.

19. Jamie Whincup

He's Australian Supercars' Michael Schumacher with seven championship titles and the most race wins in that championship's history, so the thought of Whincup in Formula 1 gets the blood pumping.

Fast, consistent and dependable, Whincup has only finished outside the top-three in the championship once since 2007. Even at 37, retirement supposedly looming, he's winning races and has a contract through 2021. The mind boggles at what Whincup, who started in single-seaters, might have achieved in open-wheel racing.

18. Davide Valsecchi

Known today as the most effervescent of racing pundits, if you could imagine taking that enthusiasm and manifesting it behind the wheel, that’s how he drove: Valsecchi was a joy to behold. His junior racing career yielded just one win, but when he arrived in GP2 he flourished and was crowned both GP2 and GP2 Asia champion.

Promoted to Lotus F1 reserve, his big break should have come when Kimi Raikkonen missed the final two races of 2013. Yet the team opted to call up the perceived safe hands of Heikki Kovalainen, who finished a disappointing and distant 14th in both races – most frustratingly at Abu Dhabi where Valsecchi held the record as the most successful driver at the circuit in GP2, scoring three wins and two P2s. His dream crushed, he hung up his helmet in 2016.

17. Antonio Felix Da Costa

As a member of the Red Bull junior programme, Portugal’s da Costa should, by rights, have slotted into the mix to partner Jean-Eric Vergne at Toro Rosso in 2014. He had wowed his bosses and the establishment with a sensational 2012 season, juggling multiple disciplines, winning Macau, and narrowly missing out on the GP3 crown.

After a slightly more frustrating 2013 for da Costa, Red Bull brass decided to promote Daniil Kvyat to Toro Rosso to replace the promoted Daniel Ricciardo. DTM came calling for da Costa and then Formula E, where he currently leads the championship.

READ MORE: What now for Hamilton, Vettel and co? How delaying 2021 rules will impact the driver market

16. Gonzalo Rodriguez

“Gonchi” was a racer whose star shone bright and burned out far too quickly. One of an old-school guard, he rocked up to Formula 3000 in the late '90s and left an immediate impression on anyone who had the pleasure of meeting him and watching him race. Physically and mentally strong, friendly and charming, he became a sparring partner and great friend of Juan Pablo Montoya.

The Uruguayan followed his friend back across the Atlantic to race in ChampCar, but he was tragically killed in practice for the 1999 Grand Prix of Monterey at Laguna Seca. Having already secured a seat for the 2000 season with Patrick Racing, there’s no telling what he might have achieved either Stateside or, should fate have allowed, in Formula 1.

15. Simona de Silvestro

Simona could and possibly should have been on the grid as Formula 1’s first female racer in a generation. A regular winner in Formula Atlantic, she was regarded by many in the Indycar paddock as a genuine talent.

In 2014 she took a gamble and walked away from Indycar to pursue a year in the Sauber F1 stable as an affiliate driver in training for a 2015 seat. The team was impressed from her very first laps in their car, with internal talk that she was at least on a par with their then driver Adrian Sutil. But as her backing faltered and with Sauber already on precarious financial ground, her seat and shot at Formula 1 never materialised.

14. Paul Tracy

Although Tracy’s big F1 chance came in the mid-'90s, thus outside our 20-year remit, he could also have made a switch in the 2000s. Testing for Benetton at Estoril in 1994, he lapped faster than both Jos Verstappen and JJ Lehto's qualifying times for that year's Grand Prix.

He was offered a seat, but after seeing how Formula 1 had chewed up the undeniable Indycar driver of the day, Michael Andretti, Tracy decided to keep his focus Stateside. His peak was yet to come and, given his ChampCar title came in 2003, an early 2000s Formula 1 career could have been on the cards. While some might argue that ChampCars suited Tracy’s style better than the F1 machinery of the day, Montoya's transition suggested that PT could have made the jump and shaken up the establishment in much the same way.

13. Colin McRae

Could it have happened? There was certainly talk, and there were definitely some chances. But were they all just sponsor bluster? McRae’s first Formula 1 laps came when he and Martin Brundle did a car swap at Silverstone in 1996. Although purely for promotional reasons, Colin didn’t exactly hang around in the Jordan 195 and lapped within a few seconds of the regular racer, setting a pace which would have been good enough to see him line up on the grid for that year’s Grand Prix.

While McRae returned to rallying and winning world championships, the prospect reared its head once again at the start of the 2000s. With the Scot now a Ford driver, there was talk he might switch to Jaguar's new F1 team. Though McRae called it PR chat, you can’t help but wonder how a switch to F1 would have played out.

READ MORE: Flavio Briatore on crashgate, Schumacher vs Alonso, and winning the title for ‘a t-shirt maker’

12. Robert Wickens

Robert Wickens always seemed to be just that half-step away from getting a full grip on his dream, and he had the talent to ascend to and compete in Formula 1. As part of the Red Bull programme he’d monstered Formula BMW USA and Formula ChampCar Atlantic before running A1GP, F3 and eventually F2 and GP3.

He came second in both the F2 and GP3 championships before taking a reserve driver role at the Virgin F1 Team and moving to World Series where he won the title, beating Jean-Eric Vergne in the process. Dropped by Red Bull, he moved to DTM where he bided his time with Mercedes.

With no F1 opportunities, he found immediate success and became a fan favourite in IndyCar with a pole on his debut and the podiums flowing. Then, he survived a sickening accident at Pocono, which left him paraplegic and one of the greatly missed aces of F1.

11. Gary Paffett

Few drivers have had as many near-misses with an F1 seat as Gary Paffett, but the stand-out DTM driver for over a decade never got the deserved opportunity. An F3 champion in the early 2000s, Paffett made DTM his home and was crowned champion in 2005 before being called up as McLaren's test driver.

In 2006, Juan Pablo Montoya left the team to race in NASCAR and Paffett believed the seat was his, but McLaren went instead for Pedro de la Rosa who had deputised for Montoya at the '05 Bahrain Grand Prix.

For 2007, McLaren had already lined up Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton, and Paffett’s chance had gone. He stuck with DTM, becoming one of Mercedes’ most valued assets with another title in 2018.

READ PART 1: Will Buxton's top 20 drivers never to race in F1, #20 to #11

10. Jason Watt

Danish racer Jason Watt had the world at his feet: Danish karting champion, Formula Opel Lotus champion, Formula Ford champion, he was running in DTM against the likes of Dario Franchitti, Giancarlo Fisichella and Alex Wurz when a call came to race Formula 3000.

He leapt at it, finishing third in his debut 1997 season. In 1999, he took the title fight to the finale but Nick Heidfeld ultimately prevailed.

And then F1 came knocking, via the prospect of a shoot-out for Williams against the likes of Brazilian Bruno Junqueira, whom Watt had dispatched with ease in 3000, and an F3 rookie called Jenson Button.

Watt never joined them as a motorcycle accident in 1999 left him paralysed from the chest down and confined to a wheelchair. And that was Formula 1 done. He continued to race but Watt's F1 dream had been taken in a cruel twist of fate.

LISTEN: Jenson Button on his 2009 title, his toughest team mate and more, in Beyond The Grid

9. Adam Carroll

Impressive in everything he ever drove and gifted with the most natural flair and touch, Adam Carroll could get into anything and win.

A junior champion, he became one of the stand-outs of the early years of GP2, renowned for a racing hunger and heart that never wavered. He was the ultimate giant killer, yet he always struggled for budget and top-line drives.

Formula 1 was watching, however, and he was signed up by BAR-Honda as a test driver. He led a championship-winning assault on A1GP for team Ireland, which put him back in the spotlight for an F1 seat.

Campos (HRT) and Virgin came knocking, but Carroll was still lacking budget. Lola rated him so highly they would have given him a seat for nothing, but their 2010 entry was rejected. The frustrating thing is that he knew he had to make the most of every shot he was granted and that would have made Carroll one of the most tenacious F1 drivers of his generation.

8. Greg Moore

So revered in the racing world is the electrifying Greg Moore that even 20 years after his death, racers still put on red gloves to pay homage to the Canadian.

Moore seemed to toy with the monstrous beasts of Champ Car in a way that almost nobody else could. But as his star ascended in the States, could he have switched to F1?

It seemed very likely in the early 2000s when greats such as Jacques Villeneuve, Juan Pablo Montoya and Sebastien Bourdais all crossed over, and Moore could easily have followed.

Sir Jackie Stewart was interested, and it is rumoured that those red gloves would have found no happier a home than Maranello, where Greg was held in incredibly high regard. Sadly, we'll never know, as he was killed in a crash at the California Speedway in 1999.

7. Valentino Rossi

If ever there was a case of what might have been, it was the hugely publicised relationship between Ferrari and nine-time motorcycle racing champion Valentino Rossi.

His first running with the Scuderia came at a three-day test at Valencia in 2006 and by the end of it he was lapping within half a second of Michael Schumacher, a feat that left the German "incredulous", according to Ferrari engineer Luigi Mazzola.

READ MORE: What now for Hamilton, Vettel and co? How delaying 2021 rules will impact the driver market

We now know that Ferrari had made an offer to the Italian, which insisted he start as a test driver, move to a satellite team and only race for Ferrari should all those steps go well – but Rossi rejected it.

The shocked but impressed Schumacher was thus left somewhat saddened when Rossi decided to stay on two wheels.

As Rossi continued to test for the team through to 2010 and Ferrari looked at running a third car for him, the prospect lingered tantalisingly out of reach.

The desire clearly burned strong on both sides and, as Rossi’s recent swap with Lewis Hamilton reinforced, it’s a dream The Doctor never quite let go.

6. Jamie Green

It’s late 2004 and the GP2 Series is set to replace Formula 3000 as the feeder championship for Formula 1.

Based on the last few years of racing at this level, the plum seats are going to be at Arden – filled by Heikki Kovalainen and Nicholas Lapierre – and BCN Competicion.

Nico Rosberg is about to sign with BCN when a call comes through from Nicolas Todt and Fred Vasseur at the all new ART Grand Prix squad. The driver they’d hoped would sign with them, their reigning F3 EuroSeries champion, has decided to go to DTM. Would Nico be interested in the seat? The rest, as they say, is history.

ART was set to become the dominant force of GP2, launching not only Rosberg but Lewis Hamilton, Romain Grosjean and Nico Hulkenberg to F1 as champions in its first five years.

QUIZ: Who's missing from these classic F1 scenes?

But their first champion? That should by all accounts have been Jamie Green. A force in junior racing, phenomenal in Formula 3 and a racer who, at the time, was considered a better prospect than both Hamilton and Robert Kubica, Green has and continues to have a solid career in DTM.

But he could, and arguably should, have been battling Hamilton for Formula 1 glory for the past 15 years.

5. Scott Dixon

One of the most versatile and consistently competitive drivers of his generation, Scott Dixon is a great lost talent of modern F1.

As a five-time Indycar champion, it isn’t just his raw pace that has marked him out as the target man of the championship, it’s the fact he’s a threat no matter what he’s up against.

He’ll drive just about anything, too: A multiple champion at Daytona, he’ll just as happily tackle Le Mans as the Indy 500. And he’s respected by everyone who ever sat in a race car.

Dixon did have a trial in F1, however. After his early 2000s successes Stateside, he tested for Williams in 2004 on two separate occasions. But he failed to impress sufficiently without the time to fully embed himself in the team and on the narrow window of the grooved tyres of the day.

4. Sebastien Loeb

The greatest rally driver of all time very nearly made the jump to F1.

It all started with a promotional seat swap in 2007 where he got to try Kovalainen's Renault R27 at Circuit Paul Ricard. The very next year, Red Bull became the sponsor of his Citroen factory team in WRC and as a reward for winning the championship he tested Red Bull’s 2008 RB4 at both Silverstone and the post-season test at Barcelona where he was eighth-quickest.

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In 2009, he tested GP2 machinery to keep himself sharp. As Toro Rosso’s relationship with Bourdais was faltering, a plan was hatched to run Loeb at the season finale in Abu Dhabi, before a full F1 debut in 2010.

The reluctance to issue one of the most supremely gifted drivers on the planet a Superlicence scuppered all the plans for what would have been one of the most incredible crossovers of the modern era.

3. Jeff Gordon

The man responsible for making an entire generation of Americans fall in love with NASCAR, the 'Rainbow Warrior' never actually wanted to race stock cars.

He began his career in karts and quarter midgets, moving to sprint cars and winning the USAC Silver Crown at the age of 20. He dreamed of racing Indycar but couldn’t find the backing. Then came a call from someone who had seen him race. They wanted him to come to Europe and test F3. That someone was Sir Jackie Stewart.

With Gordon on the path towards stock car racing in the Busch Series – where he was crowned 1991's Rookie of the Year – the test never happened.

He very nearly made the switch at the end of the 1990s when BAR Honda tabled an offer to Gordon which would have seen him leave NASCAR and come to F1, but only after he’d run two seasons in ChampCar for Team Green. But Gordon wasn't swayed and, by 2003 he was a four-time NASCAR Cup Series champion.

That year, mutual sponsors gave him the chance to swap a seat with Montoya for 15 laps of the Indianapolis road course and Gordon wound up half a second off the Colombian.

Those 15 laps were all that he got. A touted 2005 move to Williams never took place and F1 missed out on the most gifted American racer of his generation.

2. Dario Franchitti

Dario could have been an F1 driver, not just because he was a great talent of his or any generation, but because there were three chances.

Call it luck, judgement or simply fate, the cards never fell quite right. The Scot had his first taste of F1 courtesy of the McLaren Autosport Young Driver award.

He impressed McLaren so much that they offered him a test role alongside his Champ Car commitments Stateside, but with David Coulthard and Mika Hakkinen at the team he sensed a chance was never there and turned Ron Dennis down.

His next opportunity came at the end of the '90s when he was approached to quit Champ Car's Team Green and move with BAR-Honda to F1. He didn't take the gamble.

Incredibly, Franchitti’s move to F1 would have freed up his Champ Car seat for Jeff Gordon as BAR and Team Green were linked back then by BAT sponsorship – so BAR-Honda may have had Franchitti and Gordon in F1 by 2002!

A final chance came in 2000 with a surprise test for Jaguar at Silverstone, but following the death of his best friend Greg Moore and serious injuries for Franchitti from a huge crash in testing at Homestead, he wasn't prepared.

Over the next 15 years, he would win three Indy 500s and four IndyCar titles to go down as one of the greatest racers to cross the Atlantic. We can’t help but wonder what he might have achieved in Formula 1.

1. Tom Kristensen

Mr Le Mans is widely regarded as one of the greatest racing drivers ever with a combination of humility, grace, uncompromising work ethic and a calm, assured style behind a wheel.

He's racked up plaudits, awards and success in the sport that is rivalled by few others.

He was German and Japanese F3 champion, won races in Formula 3000, Formula Nippon, the DTM and BTCC, and when the chance came with a last-minute call-up to race at Le Mans in 1997, he put in one of the most astonishing debut performances ever witnessed to help Joest take victory.

While his junior racing contemporaries Alex Zanardi and Mika Hakkinen went on to success in open-wheel racing, Kristensen made Le Mans his domain.

His real run of successes at La Sarthe began in the 2000s where he won six in a row, amassing nine total Le Mans victories, six Sebring 12 Hours and a World Endurance Championship.

There was always interest in Formula 1, both from him and from the sport. He tested for Minardi, Tyrrell and most notably Williams, where his work for Michelin was considered vital to the manufacturer’s understanding of the category.

He very nearly signed for Prost but the budget wasn't there and, arguably, F1's loss was the rest of motorsport's gain as Kristensen could have become a footnote racing for teams beneath his ability.

It's simply too sad a notion to think that we never witnessed him race in this category, such is Kristensen's skillset. Would he trade one Le Mans win for a year at the sharp end in Formula 1? Unlikely. But that would have been something to see.

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