Former Scuderia Ferrari driver Kimi Raikkonen looked back on his time alongside Sebastian Vettel at the Maranello team, a period in which the 2007 Formula 1 world champion got the chance to notice Sebastian Vettel’s “particular” way of working.
Kimi Raikkonen and Sebastian Vettel worked together at Ferrari between 2015 and 2018, with a very good and amiable relationship on track as well as away from it. The German driver is well-known for taking notes and going into great detail during technical briefings. The Finnish driver confirmed that this was something he witnessed at the Italian side.
“Obviously [he’s] a great guy,” – Kimi Raikkonen replied for the Beyond The Grid podcast when asked about his former Ferrari teammate – “We had a good relationship always, and [he had] a very particular way of working!”
The host of the Beyond The Grid podcast, Tom Clarkson, pointed out that the German driver “works hard”, but Kimi Raikkonen suggested that such a method of working does not necessarily imply that he is doing more than other drivers, with each taking their own approach to the job.
“What is hard [work], what is not hard [work]?. But it might take a while [for Vettel]! But then everybody has their different way. It doesn’t always… People say, ‘Oh, he must work hard, because he leaves the last’. Not him [Vettel], but that’s generally. It’s like, if you’ve done your work, if you’re only going to stay at the paddock, or whatever it is, for an extra three hours to make sure that you’re last [to leave], that you look good…People can do what they want. I’ll do my job, and when I’m happy that everything is done as we wish with the engineers, I leave. We all have a different way of working, and different things that we want to look [at] and see.” – KImi Raikkonen added.
When leaving Ferrari, Sebastian Vettel aditted that he “failed” during his six-year stint alongside the Maranello team due to the fact that he did not manage to win a Formula 1 world title. Kimi Raikkonen can understand why the German may feel this way.
“We are all here to try to win, and if you don’t win, it’s kind of been a failure, in many ways. I don’t mean it as a bad way. There could be endless reasons for it. But we are here, especially when you’re in a team that we expected to win as a team, you could say that is a failure, or it’s kind of [that] the year didn’t count much, but that’s just what happens.” – the Finnish driver continued.
Kimi Raikkonen, who retired from the sport at the end of the 2021 championship, had many teammates during his long Formula 1 career, including a short period working with Juan Pablo Montoya at McLaren, as well as being paired with Fernando Alonso at the Italian side for one year.
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The 2007 World Champion feels his relationship with Sebastian Vettel was one of the best he experienced in Formula 1, as well as his time working with Antonio Giovinazzi at Alfa Romeo.
“I have with Antonio [a] very good [relationship]. Because also, obviously, we’ve been now three years in the same team, but he was at Ferrari when I was there. So I think it’s very similar, because Antonio was involved in a lot of things there, even those years, so we knew each other already. But probably the closest of anyone as a driver, for sure, were Seb and Antonio. But also with Seb, we used to live very close to each other, so [we] got to spend some time [together] outside of the race.” – the former Ferrari driver concluded.
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