The 2011 season's perfume still wafts in the air, and yet it hasn't taken long for us all to move on from it. Tuesday's news that 2007 world champion Kimi Raikkonen is rejoining the F1 grid from next season, in a new two-year deal with the Lotus Renault GP (or just 'Lotus', as they'll be known next year), has added an extra reason for fans to wish away the 108 days standing between us and the start of FP1 in Australia's 2012 season opener.
Raikkonen's return to Formula One with the Renaultus squad has come as something of a surprise. Kimi was namedropped by team boss Eric Boullier as being on their list of preferred drivers for their 2012 seat now Robert Kubica has confirmed he will not be fit for the start of next season, but after the slightly shambolic way Renault handed their Raikkonen talks last year, it looked more likely that if the Finn was coming back anywhere, it would be with Williams.
And yet the deal is done, and Kimi's return has been greeted with rabid joy from his ever-loyal fanbase, and intrigued raised eyebrows from the rest. His comeback to Formula One further boosts the quality at the sharp end of the current F1 grid, no matter how many pay drivers and Pedro de la Rosas there might be further back, with 2012 now seeing six world champions grace the grid, every championship-winner dating back to 2000 now being represented in the sport's current line-up.
But now that the deal is signed and sealed, Raikkonen will now face a similar sort of struggle to that of F1's most recent returning champion Michael Schumacher, namely the challenge of turning a midfield team into championship contenders. His two-year deal isn't exactly the longest-term commitment to a challenge imaginable, but it seems to show that he is in this for more than just a quick toe-in-the-water to work off a spot of F1 withdrawal.
Renaultus themselves have endured a trying 2011 season. Robbed of their lead driver after Robert Kubica's pre-season accident, the team actually began with a half-decent car in the new and innovative R31. Two podiums in the first two races boosted confidence that while they wouldn't be challenging for the championship, they should still have been overhauling Mercedes for the 'best of the rest' crown behind the top three.
But then it all went wrong. Their development work, hindered by the "ambitious but rubbish" front-exiting exhaust design which proved to be as much of an engineering dead-end as the 2004 Williams walrus nose, floundered, and the car slipped further and further off the pace. The team descended into hurried driver changes, confused infighting and general failure, and by the end of the year they only barely hung on to fifth place in the championship from the resurgent form of Force India.
The capture of Raikkonen, then, is an immediate riposte to their struggles, with team owner Gerard Lopez promising that this was simply "the first step of several announcements which should turn us into an even more serious contender in the future". The team has already been linked with former McLaren sporting director Dave Ryan, and the decision to sign Kimi as Kubica's replacement rather than the less experienced likes of Bruno Senna or Romain Grosjean smacks of a team not willing to spend too much time working on rebuilding.
Where this leaves Kubica himself is unclear. The team has always said that there will be a space available for him when he feels fit to return, and a testing team standing by to help him get to that position. But should he recover full fitness midway through 2012, there is now no Renault seat for him to take, and the recent reports of him moving to Ferrari for his comeback will likely gain momentum, assuming that the team still need petrov's roubles for their ambition to be matched by the funds needed to make it happen.
But principally, for Raikkonen's comeback to be a genuine success, he will need to shed his old image of a 'turn up and drive' sort of racer, and roll his sleeves up for some serious hard graft. "There is always a lot of talk about the motivation but nobody really knows what I do or what I think except for myself," was his view of the situation after the deal was revealed. But he'll need to offer more than words if he wants to add to his 18 wins in F1 to date. Endless hours of simulator work, debriefs and practice comparisons to try and boost Renault out of their midfield mire.
Still, however Raikkonen's return shakes out, there is no doubt that this is an interesting development. Theoretically, F1 could be set for a sensational era, with Vettel at Red Bull, Alonso at Ferrari, Hamilton and Button at McLaren, Schumacher at Mercedes and now Raikkonen at Renault. Six world champions spread across five ambitious outfits, and all with the potential to deliver a race-winning car.
While it is a bit of a shame that Raikkonen has turned tail and hurried back to the sport he left at the end of 2009, giving up on his efforts to crack rallying, NASCAR and even sportscar racing in the process, for F1 fans the return will add an extra layer of intrigue to next season's grid. Whether or not it actually works will now be down to Kimi himself.
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