Kimi Raikkonen needs 31 Grands Prix in order to catch record holder Rubens Barrichello and his 324 race participations. Should he fulfill his two-year contract with Alfa Romeo, then he would match and surpass the record of the Brazilian. But this was no reason for the “Iceman” to continue his Formula 1 career after leaving Ferrari.
“I’ve never chases for any numbers,” the Finn says, as reported by motorsport-total.com – “I do not care if it’s 20 or 20,000, it does not matter.” Whether he has ten races more or less than another driver does not dictate his decision, as Kimi Kimi enjoys driving and just wants to continue to do so. “And if I no longer feel that, then I stop,” he clarifies.
Bahrain will be Kimi Räikkönen’s 294 Grand Prix race, which puts him in fifth place on the overall list. At the end of the season, he will have overtaken Michael Schumacher and Jenson Button and together with Fernando Alonso on second place. But Kimi is more interested in the here and now. He would like to have the greatest possible success with Alfa Romeo – of course, victories and the world title. But that is not realistic with the former Sauber racing team. At the season opener in Australia, he was eighth. When asked about his goals, he only shrugs his shoulders – in a typical Kimi manner.
“I do not know what the team expects, they hired me and had some expectations, but I never asked them,” said Raikkonen. “I expect much more of myself than any of these people will ever expect from me.” It was already like that with Ferrari: “I’ll just try the maximum, and if we do that, it’s like that.”
And what would that be in terms of numbers? “If we can do it all, maybe we can finish sixth, we only had one race, so you can not know that.”
Leave a Reply