12-12-2021, 03:43 PM
A good article/interview. I just started learning about F1 thanks to the Netflix series Drive to Survive and though Kimi wasn't featured at all I've read about him and seen interviews and other footage on the Formula 1 youtube channel. He would be my favorite hands down if he was sticking around. The man is just a no bullcrap kind of guy and I appreciate that. There's way too much of it pretty much everywhere in society and he's a complete 180 of it all. There was a scene in DTS where he was asked something along the lines if he ever liked the interviews or questions and he said, "not really," then got up and walked away. That was awesome.
Anyway, the article is a bit long and I copied some of it below but I say read the whole thing. Whether you know who he is or not he has an interesting perspective and is most definitely a no BS kind of guy.
Link
Unfiltered and unapologetic: The retiring Kimi Raikkonen on his time in F1
Kimi Raikkonen's first memory of racing a car dates back 32 years. He didn't have a driving licence at the time (he was only 10), but in the Finnish town of Espoo in the early 1990s, that didn't seem to matter. The car was an old Lada, which may or may not have been road legal, and the track was an improvised loop of the yard around his parent's house.
There were only two entrants in this historically significant racing series: Kimi and his older brother Rami. Kimi had ridden motocross bikes around the front yard for as long as he could remember, so he knew the track well and was pretty sure he could handle the step up from two wheels to four -- even if reaching the pedals was still a bit of a stretch.
After such a storied career, you might think that there's nothing left to learn about Raikkonen, but that couldn't be further from the truth. When he crosses the line for the final time in Abu Dhabi, he will do so as one of the most popular drivers in the sport but also one of the least understood.
It's undeniable that those two factors are in some way linked. For many, Raikkonen has achieved cult status precisely because he gives away so little in front of the cameras.
Doing what he wants has been a core theme of Raikkonen's time in F1 -- whether it's reaching for an ice cream during a red flag period or taking two years off during the peak of his career -- and he believes it has been crucial to the longevity of his time in the sport.
"For sure there are lots of people who have tried to change me over the years, especially at the beginning," he says. "They said you should do this or that, but I never really listened to them -- and luckily not, because I don't think I could live my life doing something that makes other people happy.
"I think you can kind of do things to make people happy for a year or something, but it's never going to work in the long run. You will have a bigger issue.
Perhaps Raikkonen is getting out of F1 at the right time. In an era when sports stars get "cancelled" for saying or doing the wrong thing, he's happy he isn't starting his career now.
"It's f---ing crazy -- in the world generally, I mean," he adds. "Because whatever you say, people will say, 'How can you say this?' and they can turn anything to look bad.
"It's a f---ing weird thing, it's f---ing crazy. People get crazy. I mean, I don't care. If I say something and someone gets upset, I honestly don't give a f---.
"If you insult somebody, fine, I understand why you get upset, but in general if you can't say something [because it upsets someone] ... I just stay out of it because I don't want to waste my time on this kind of bulls---. There are other things in life to worry about.
Anyway, the article is a bit long and I copied some of it below but I say read the whole thing. Whether you know who he is or not he has an interesting perspective and is most definitely a no BS kind of guy.
Link
Unfiltered and unapologetic: The retiring Kimi Raikkonen on his time in F1
Kimi Raikkonen's first memory of racing a car dates back 32 years. He didn't have a driving licence at the time (he was only 10), but in the Finnish town of Espoo in the early 1990s, that didn't seem to matter. The car was an old Lada, which may or may not have been road legal, and the track was an improvised loop of the yard around his parent's house.
There were only two entrants in this historically significant racing series: Kimi and his older brother Rami. Kimi had ridden motocross bikes around the front yard for as long as he could remember, so he knew the track well and was pretty sure he could handle the step up from two wheels to four -- even if reaching the pedals was still a bit of a stretch.
After such a storied career, you might think that there's nothing left to learn about Raikkonen, but that couldn't be further from the truth. When he crosses the line for the final time in Abu Dhabi, he will do so as one of the most popular drivers in the sport but also one of the least understood.
It's undeniable that those two factors are in some way linked. For many, Raikkonen has achieved cult status precisely because he gives away so little in front of the cameras.
Doing what he wants has been a core theme of Raikkonen's time in F1 -- whether it's reaching for an ice cream during a red flag period or taking two years off during the peak of his career -- and he believes it has been crucial to the longevity of his time in the sport.
"For sure there are lots of people who have tried to change me over the years, especially at the beginning," he says. "They said you should do this or that, but I never really listened to them -- and luckily not, because I don't think I could live my life doing something that makes other people happy.
"I think you can kind of do things to make people happy for a year or something, but it's never going to work in the long run. You will have a bigger issue.
Perhaps Raikkonen is getting out of F1 at the right time. In an era when sports stars get "cancelled" for saying or doing the wrong thing, he's happy he isn't starting his career now.
"It's f---ing crazy -- in the world generally, I mean," he adds. "Because whatever you say, people will say, 'How can you say this?' and they can turn anything to look bad.
"It's a f---ing weird thing, it's f---ing crazy. People get crazy. I mean, I don't care. If I say something and someone gets upset, I honestly don't give a f---.
"If you insult somebody, fine, I understand why you get upset, but in general if you can't say something [because it upsets someone] ... I just stay out of it because I don't want to waste my time on this kind of bulls---. There are other things in life to worry about.
.gif "Laughing")