March 4 2001 marked Kimi Raikkonen’s first ever Grand Prix with Sauber. And as he prepares for the 2021 season with the same squad – now in their guise as Alfa Romeo – the 41-year-old said he was still as excited about the challenge of racing and developing a car as he was when he was 21.
Alfa Romeo launched their new C41 on Monday, with Raikkonen set to partner for Antonio Giovinazzi for a third consecutive year at the team in 2021.
And asked where the motivation came from to prepare for yet another season, 20 years on from his first F1 start, Raikkonen replied: “Time goes quickly. Obviously it’s quite a long time ago but then I was a couple of years out of F1 in the middle of it, so it doesn’t feel like 20 years. Obviously the racing and the driving [is what still excites me]. I’ve never been a big fan of all the rest… but I enjoy the racing and the challenge to try to improve things and getting better. We’re excited for the year,” added Kimi Raikkonen, who with 329 starts to date is F1’s most experienced ever driver. “But it’s very unknown because we haven’t tried the car, there’s obviously rule changes. Where are we going to be? We don’t know, but in a few weeks’ time, obviously we’ll see from testing how things are running and how the car is feeling and roughly in one month’s time, in the first race, everybody will see where everybody is.
“It’s going to be not many days before the first race, so we have to do a good three days [of testing], put [the laps in], learn a lot from the car and see what we get.” – Kimi concluded.
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