Alfa Romeo Finnish driver Kimi Raikkonen interview for motorsport-total.com on his ambivalent relationship to racing, alcohol and smoking
Q: “Kimi, you seem to have become more relaxed with the media lately. One could almost get the impression that you enjoy it more than before.”
Kimi Räikkönen: “Not really. But I have no choice. That’s the problem! I don’t have much to say. But it’s part of my job.”
Q: “Has your approach to interviews like this changed?
Räikkönen: “I see it more or less the same way as before. It’s still the same people who work as journalists in Formula 1 and mostly ask the same questions. That hasn’t changed much over the years. There are so many stories that you are asked about. The journalists write these stories themselves and then ask our opinion.”
Q: “You always say that you enjoy driving, but not the PR and media work. You had that when you drove rallies…”
Räikkönen: “Right. Especially in the second year, when it was clear what I’d do – whether I’d keep driving rally or do nothing. I was very happy in many ways!”
Q: “Then why did you decide to leave rallying and return to Formula 1? You had what you wanted.”
Räikkönen: “I tried a bit of NASCAR. What I liked about it was the racing. Rally is not racing in the classic sense. In rallying you don’t have a direct opponent, you drive against the stopwatch. When I drove the Nationwide and Truck races in NASCAR, I noticed how much I enjoy the direct duel against other drivers. I thought to myself: ‘Maybe it’d be nice to have that again more often’. And Formula 1 is the top class in the eyes of most racing drivers. So I wanted to know if it would work out again.”
Q: “But you could have driven EuroNASCAR, or in another racing series with less media coverage, if you were only interested in racing itself. Or was the challenge of Formula 1 so important to you?”
Räikkönen: “Yes. Racing, driving in Formula 1, that’s fun for me. No matter what you do, there will always be something positive and something negative. You can’t just have the positive, no matter what racing series you’re in. And elsewhere it’s not the interviews, but other things that you don’t like. This probably applies to all areas of life, that there is always something positive and something negative. It’s difficult to find something perfect that has nothing wrong with it. Let’s take the next holiday, for example: once you’re there, it might be beautiful. But the journey is annoying.”
Q: “Let’s talk about your book. Have you read it?”
Räikkönen: “Yes. Normally I don’t read books. It’s too much like school for me. At school I had to read a few books, but I don’t think I finished reading a single one! That was too boring for me. Not necessarily because of the books themselves – but I couldn’t be bothered to read. On the day of publication there was a small lounge event, and the evening before I read it. I roughly knew what it would contain because I had printed and read individual sections. But that was the first time I had the whole book in front of me, the way it was supposed to look. Then I read it.”
Q: “Was there also a topic that you discussed with the author, where you said to him: ‘But we’re not going to publish that!’ Or was there no such thing?
Räikkönen: “Not really. Maybe a little thing, but not really. It wasn’t like I was trying to hide anything. Of course, there would have been lots of stories that could have been written in. But a book like that has X pages. You can’t put everything in there, or it’ll get too thick. And I never wanted to have a scandal book in which it was told that this and that happened so and so. There wasn’t actually any topic on which I said: ‘This can’t go in like that’. There was no such thing. I was very open.”
Q: “There was one chapter that I found very entertaining – and to be honest it reminded me a bit of my own wilder days. It is the chapter ‘Sixteen Days’. It describes how you were drunk non-stop between Bahrain and Barcelona in 2013. How could you even remember it?”
Räikkönen: “I couldn’t even. Half of it other people had to tell me. We just toured across Europe and had a bit of fun. It wasn’t the first time. And it was quite normal for us.”
Q: “I think that’s what people love about you: that you just don’t give a shit! Maybe someone else would have said: ‘We’re not putting that in the book.’”
Räikkönen: “But there’s nothing wrong with that. Where is that a bad story? There’s nothing bad in it. That was quite normal, and it happened many times. The chapter in the book is not the only time I’ve done something like this. I had fun”.
Q: “You are married now and you have two children. I guess that kind of fun has changed in your life.”
Räikkönen: “Sure. Now there are other priorities. At that time I had my work, but otherwise … If I wanted to fly somewhere, I just flew there. I didn’t have to ask anyone. I was old enough to do what I wanted. “When you have a family, it changes. I want to be with my children. I’m already away from home a lot with racing anyway. I enjoy the time with my family. Sometimes I still go out with my wife. But that’s something completely different. We’re all getting older, aren’t we? And after 16 drunken days I don’t feel as good today as I used to. There are other things in life that are important to me today. That doesn’t mean that I can’t go out anymore. Of course I can! But my time with the children and the family is more important to me”.
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