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.

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You should watch Rush

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Kimi gave the best interviews

Also, I am glad Max won the championship.

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"Treyvon Wallet is elite run defender and better overall than Aidan Hutchinson" 11/11/23

Fins are the best drivers... you should see their driving tests. Crazy. Pretty sure only 2% of Americans would pass.

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You should watch Rush

I did. It's what got me interested enough to watch Drive to Survive on Netflix which led to watching the Netflix Schumacher documentary which led to me starting to follow F1 A few months ago.

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Kimi's interviews are the best. I watched one today that was done back in 2016 called My Awkward Interview With Kimi Raikkonen. If you haven't seen it check it out on youtube. He seemed to actually enjoy it. Lol.

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You should watch Rush

I did. It's what got me interested enough to watch Drive to Survive on Netflix which led to watching the Netflix Schumacher documentary which led to me starting to follow F1 A few months ago.

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Kimi's interviews are the best. I watched one today that was done back in 2016 called My Awkward Interview With Kimi Raikkonen. If you haven't seen it check it out on youtube. He seemed to actually enjoy it. Lol.

Unfortunately, you've gotten into F1 when it is nothing more than a politically correct sanitary pad.

You need to go back a decade or three to really appreciate F1.

Watch Schumacher vs Hill, Prost vs Senna to see real racing when the driver was the difference.

But that said, good to see someone recognise that racing is more than just turning left on a track.  Right hand turns do exist.

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I did. It's what got me interested enough to watch Drive to Survive on Netflix which led to watching the Netflix Schumacher documentary which led to me starting to follow F1 A few months ago.

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Kimi's interviews are the best. I watched one today that was done back in 2016 called My Awkward Interview With Kimi Raikkonen. If you haven't seen it check it out on youtube. He seemed to actually enjoy it. Lol.

Unfortunately, you've gotten into F1 when it is nothing more than a politically correct sanitary pad.

You need to go back a decade or three to really appreciate F1.

Watch Schumacher vs Hill, Prost vs Senna to see real racing when the driver was the difference.

But that said, good to see someone recognise that racing is more than just turning left on a track.  Right hand turns do exist.

Yeah sports in general are infected with political correctness, power grabs and other stupidity. As Jags fans we see first hand how the NFL and sports media loves to hate our team. 

The final lap in the final race of the 2021 F1 season caused quite a stir and a lot of people have a lot of different opinions about it. I don't know enough about the sport yet to really understand what happened and why certain decisions were made but on the face of it I was glad to see someone challenge Hamilton and unseat him. Whether it was a legitimate win we'll never know but I'll take it. I do know ending a season on a safety car lap is lame as heck so I think it was the right call for that reason alone. 

I think Hamilton and Toto Wolff are just mad because they were finally beaten. Max Verstappen is a heck of a driver and Checo was a solid wingman. Most of the Mercedes fans think F1 decided a new team needed to win and saw the opportunity when the crash happened and manipulated things to make it so. Regardless, I was happy to see Carlos Sainz podium. 

I have been looking at some of the older races. Evidently Kimi came in around the time Mika Haikkonnen (sp) was leaving the sport and they both raced against/with Schumacher. Fernando Alonso has been around for a long time. It's crazy to think he and Kimi are considered old for Formula One but that's how sport is. 

Did you know Kimi is the reason Red Bull has an F1 team? I watched a video that explained it and he seems to have has the butterfly effect in F1 for some time. And he doesn't care one bit about it. Lol.

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I used to watch F1 regularly a few years ago. I knew the drivers and teams very well, but it's all become antiseptically clean, overly monitored and technologically separated from the premise of drivers and machines in gritty competition. The fact they have a small crowd of mechanics performing pitstops is ridiculous. I appreciate the speed and precision, but it has evolved into something that just isn't quite as interesting as the sport was in the past. Like NASCAR, it used to be a competition of not only drivers, but car builders. Now the technical requirements of every car must be so similar that the only difference between them is the color. I realize the differences go deeper, but it's just not as fun to watch anymore.

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I used to watch F1 regularly a few years ago. I knew the drivers and teams very well, but it's all become antiseptically clean, overly monitored and technologically separated from the premise of drivers and machines in gritty competition. The fact they have a small crowd of mechanics performing pitstops is ridiculous. I appreciate the speed and precision, but it has evolved into something that just isn't quite as interesting as the sport was in the past. Like NASCAR, it used to be a competition of not only drivers, but car builders. Now the technical requirements of every car must be so similar that the only difference between them is the color. I realize the differences go deeper, but it's just not as fun to watch anymore.

And the FIA has given each team a monetary cap on what they can spend on their cars and it's even across the board. Mercedes can only spend $140M the same as Williams. Mercedes is used to spending over $4M on their cars per year. I don't know that Williams has ever spent over $135M in awhile, if ever. It will be interesting to see how the teams stack up accordingly next season. 

I don't have anything to compare recent years to so I don't know how good it was in the past but I definitely get what you're saying. Who used to do pitstops? It's crazy to me those can be done in 3 seconds. NASCAR pitstops seem to take forever compared to F1. That surprised me. Lol.

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I used to watch F1 regularly a few years ago. I knew the drivers and teams very well, but it's all become antiseptically clean, overly monitored and technologically separated from the premise of drivers and machines in gritty competition. The fact they have a small crowd of mechanics performing pitstops is ridiculous. I appreciate the speed and precision, but it has evolved into something that just isn't quite as interesting as the sport was in the past. Like NASCAR, it used to be a competition of not only drivers, but car builders. Now the technical requirements of every car must be so similar that the only difference between them is the color. I realize the differences go deeper, but it's just not as fun to watch anymore.

And the FIA has given each team a monetary cap on what they can spend on their cars and it's even across the board. Mercedes can only spend $140M the same as Williams. Mercedes is used to spending over $4M on their cars per year. I don't know that Williams has ever spent over $135M in awhile, if ever. It will be interesting to see how the teams stack up accordingly next season. 

I don't have anything to compare recent years to so I don't know how good it was in the past but I definitely get what you're saying. Who used to do pitstops? It's crazy to me those can be done in 3 seconds. NASCAR pitstops seem to take forever compared to F1. That surprised me. Lol.

Watch Schumacher | Netflix Official Site

I'll watch it sometime this week.

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And the FIA has given each team a monetary cap on what they can spend on their cars and it's even across the board. Mercedes can only spend $140M the same as Williams. Mercedes is used to spending over $4M on their cars per year. I don't know that Williams has ever spent over $135M in awhile, if ever. It will be interesting to see how the teams stack up accordingly next season. 

I don't have anything to compare recent years to so I don't know how good it was in the past but I definitely get what you're saying. Who used to do pitstops? It's crazy to me those can be done in 3 seconds. NASCAR pitstops seem to take forever compared to F1. That surprised me. Lol.

Watch Schumacher | Netflix Official Site

I'll watch it sometime this week.

I watched it about a month or so ago but am going to watch it again to pick up on things I know I missed the first time around.

I watched a youtube video a few days ago that talked about and showed why Raikkonen was a beast in his day. I'm hoping to check out his early career. It also seemed to highlight how a good driver in a bad car can only do so much. And it's crazy to think he used to race Shumacher.

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