Six of the Best...Kimi Raikkonen moments

With The People's Kimi having set off on his voyage back to the Formula One grid this week with his special extra test for the Lotus squad, Patronise F1 takes a look back at six standout moments from Raikkonen's first stint in F1.

When we were young. 1) A point on his debut (Australian GP 2001)

There's nothing really to suggest that Kimi Raikkonen was a trendsetter during his time in Formula One, but he could well be seen as the catalyst for the recent trend towards younger and younger drivers making a name for themselves on the F1 grid. When Kimi picked up the first point of his career in his first ever F1 race at Albert Park in 2001 at the tender age of 21 years 138 days, he became the third-youngest-ever point scorer in the sport's history. Now, thanks to the likes of Sebastian Vettel, Jaime Alguersuari and Sergio Perez, his record sees him placed down in 10th on the all-time list.

In hindsight, the point itself came to the Finn in a slightly fortuitous manner. He crossed the line in his Sauber in seventh place, only being promoted to sixth and the final championship point available when Olivier Panis was slapped with a post-race penalty for overtaking under yellow flags (evidence that the FIA didn't invent post-race penalties at Spa 2008 to piss off Lewis Hamilton fans). But then perhaps it wasn't really the point itself that was impressive about the Finn's debut, but the race weekend as a whole.

In Melbourne, Raikkonen arrived as a fresh-faced rookie for the Sauber team, having barely been granted a superlicense by the FIA because of his inexperience (he had, prior to the Australian race, competed in just 23 single-seater races - winning 13 of them). He went on to take until the second practice session of the weekend to outpace team mate Nick Heidfeld despite suffering an engine issue midway through the session - ending the session 8th overall, before qualifying for his first race in 13th, and recovering from a poor start to take 7th on the road, setting the 7th fastest race lap in the process.

As a set of results was concerned, it was as good as anyone his age had managed in the sport, and served as an immediate justification not only for Sauber's somewhat bold decision to sign up a Formula Renault champion who by all rights should have been a couple of years away from an F3000 debut, never mind F1, but also helped to secure his future in the sport, the FIA's initial superlicense having been on a provisional four race basis after the youngster failed to strictly meet the required criteria.

2) The win that got away (French GP 2002)

Having moved to the McLaren team for the 2002 season in a straight 'Flying Finn' replacement for Mika Hakkinen, Raikkonen might have been forgiven for expecting more than he was handed by the team in the 2002 season. A combination of the supremely dominant Ferrari F2002 and some chronic unreliability from McLaren's new MP4-17 meant that Raikkonen endured the first winless campaign for a McLaren driver for six seasons.

The closest he came to ticking off his first GP win during the season came at Magny-Cours, during a curious race weekend which featured such sights as the Arrows team's infamous deliberate DNQ, a scary qualifying accident for Giancarlo Fisichella that kept the Italian driver out of the race, and a litany of slightly implausible drive-through penalties for the top drivers, as almost to a man they managed to cross the white line at the exit of the French track's pit lane.

The dominant force in 2002, Michael Schumacher, was one of those penalised. And that penalty left Raikkonen clear in front following an impressive drive that had seen him mix it up front with the Ferrari and Williams drivers despite the team's palpable performance issues. Despite Schumacher rejoining after his penalty within sight of the McLaren, the Finn kept him at bay as the laps ticked by, Schumacher seemingly unable to close down the gap as it remained around 1.5 seconds.

Unfortunately, Kimi was undone by Allan McNish's Toyota. Or more specifically by a layer of oil left behind after the Scot's engine let go with a handful of laps to go. Approaching the Adelaide hairpin on lap 67, Raikkonen braked, hit the slick oily surface, and skated too deep into the corner. Although he recovered without too many dramas, Schumacher was through and went on to win the race and the 2002 title, at the preposterously early stage of mid-July. Raikkonen himself would have to wait until the 2003 Malaysian Grand Prix to break his win duck.

3) The comeback drive (Japanese GP 2005)

If there is an abiding image of the 2005 Japanese Grand Prix, and to be fair it is hard to pick just a single one, it is probably that of Raikkonen surging past Fisichella's Renault to take the lead on the final lap. But that pass, one that is now historically remembered for the Italian driver's shambolic decision to defend into the Casio chicane despite Raikkonen being nowhere near him, compromising his speed down the start/finish straight and allowing his rival to cruise past him, was not the story of Raikkonen's race. Not by a long stretch.

For him to get to the stage of being able to pilfer the candy from the baby in the first place, Raikkonen had to dredge himself up from his starting position of 17th on the grid. And while he wasn't the only big name wrong-footed by the rain-hit qualifying session, his recovery drive was the most remarkable, putting Fernando Alonso's (16th to 3rd), Michael Schumacher's (14th to 7th) and Juan Pablo Montoya's (18th to Lap 1 DNF) in the shade by some margin.

The Finn leapt up to 12th in the chaos of the opening lap, before passing Felipe Massa, Antonio Pizzonia and Jacques Villeneuve to move up to 9th by lap 10. That put him on the tail of the also-recovering Alonso, who he outfoxed along with a number of others on pit stop strategy. He scampered past Michael Schumacher on lap 29 to take fourth, before overcoming Mark Webber and Jenson Button at the final stops to emerge from his final stop in second, 4.3 seconds behind Fisichella with six laps to go. On fresher tyres, he gobbled up the gap to the Renault, to pressure his rival into his infamous mistake on the final tour.

The drive came in the race following Alonso's crowning as the new world champion, after Raikkonen's challenge had been blunted every step of the way by misfortune and misadventure, and almost played out like one final race-long guttural scream of frustration given the season that he had endured. This was Raikkonen proving that whatever the result of the championship, he had been the unofficial driver of the year.

4) Title success (Brazilian GP 2007)

In an odd way, given the hysterical fanbase he built up during his nine year stay in the sport, the crowning glory of Raikkonen's F1 career was largely overshadowed by the circumstances surrounding the implausible 2007 championship campaign. Given the way that the McLaren team's own challenge for the title so completely fell apart, firstly through Alonso and Lewis Hamilton's acrimonious relationship breakdown, and then through Hamilton's own 'defeat from the jaws of victory' approach to the final two races of the season, Raikkonen actually clinching the title is almost an afterthought to the season.

Even his final title-clinching drive saw him having to rely on some team tactics to get him ahead of the other Ferrari of Felipe Massa, with the Brazilian putting in his traditional superstar drive in front of his home Brazilian fans. But still, with two races to go Raikkonen's title challenge appeared as good as over. All he could do was win the final two races and hope that the Hamilton challenge somehow crumbled. He did, and it did.

It was a title won in spite of Raikkonen's Ferrari being second best to the McLaren machine over much of the season, which is something that doesn't happen often in a sport where a pre-requisite of winning a title tends to be having the best machinery for the job. And it was one that leant a pleasing note to the end of an undignified season for the neutral fan as well, given the uncomfortable possibility of a driver winning the title in a car that had already been deemed naughty enough to be expunged from the constructors championship.

And it also, from Kimi's point of view, appeared to signal the end point of his little experiment called 'being good at F1'. As soon as he had finally scaled F1's heights following years of frustration, near-misses and palpably rubbish McLarens, his appetite for the fight seemed to dry up. In 2008 he played second-fiddle to the delirious form of Massa, and in 2009 he played second fiddle to half of the grid. Never has one single title win so completely encapsulated the fleeting zenith of an F1 career.

5) His last great drive (Belgian GP 2008)

Not that everything Raikkonen did after that 2007 title was rubbish. But apart from a couple of early-season wins in 2008 and his KERS-based success over the unlikely form of old friend Fisichella in a Force India at Spa in 2009, the general impression from the Finn in his final two years in the sport was of a man rapidly losing interest in his chosen profession. You almost felt at some point that a story would emerge from Maranello about how he'd gone all Peter Gibbons on the company fax machine.

Still, there were occasional flashes of the old Kimi brilliance. Not least at Spa-Francorchamps in 2008, where Raikkonen produced an imperious drive at F1's remaining 'Driver's Track' to lead for almost the entire race distance after Hamilton gifted him the lead early on by spinning at La Source. Everything seemed perfect until the final few laps, when the stereotypical Belgian weather doused the track in a sprinking of water, and all hell broke loose.

The finale to Raikkonen's afternoon was, alas, an unhappy one, the to-and-fro tussle with Hamilton eventually seeing him caught out by the wet track and spinning into retirement on the penultimate lap, seeing his afternoon's work wasted. But it had been a masterful performance until the weather intervened, and it seemed unfair that a) he was rewarded with a DNF, and b) his drive is largely forgotten these days in the wake of the FIA's contentious decision to penalise Hamilton and hand the win to Massa.

We arguably never saw a vintage Kimi moment again before he toddled off to crash Citroens at the end of 2009, and depending on Lotus's car designing ability and the Finn's own commitment levels, we may not see another one even now he is back on the grid. But if his Spa drive is to serve as a footnote for 'vintage Kimi', it was a pretty impressive one all the same.

6) The Magnum moment (Malaysian GP 2009)

Formula One is not a sport that shirks at the possibility of a bit of product placement. If there was any doubt about that, then the sight of the three podium finishers after each GP these days being handed their Official Podium Watches and Official Podium Caps before they even get a chance to grab a bottle of Official Post-Race Podium Staging Area Spring Water should assure you of that.

But perhaps the most successful bit of product placement from recent years came from Raikkonen's own lackadaisical approach to his final year in the sport. After the 2009 Malaysian Grand Prix was red flagged when the heavens deposited half of the Indian Ocean onto the track midway through the second round of the season, most of the field sat patiently on the grid, getting increasingly wet and miserable, and waiting for someone, somewhere to make a decision about something.

Not Kimi, mind you. The Finn got his Ferrari back to the pits, clambered out and was then famously spotted wearing his civvies and dipping into one of Ferrari's enormous fridge freezers to extract said ice cream snack (along with a can of Coke, which always appears to be forgotten when looking back at his snack bar raid, presumably much to the chagrin of Coca-Cola's advertising department). To make the matter more laughable, the Magnum moment played out while Luca Colajanni was being interviewed, in which the Ferrari PR man insisted that once a KERS issue was fixed on the car, Kimi would be back out.

It was also a snapshot of the perceived lack of effort from Raikkonen in his final races pre-sabbatical, a shot of a man who clearly had no real interest in his chosen career any more. And one that Raikkonen fans will be hoping is not repeated on the Finn's return to the sport, when his bandwagon will be praying that the only Magnum-themed jokes we make here on Patty are awkward ones suggesting he's driving faster than a speeding bullet.

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