START OF THE YEAR

Kimi Räikkönen Alfa Romeo

“I thank all the GP Racing readers for this award. Going from P16 to P6 within a lap was obviously quite good, but when you’re in the car you don’t really focus on the overall gain, you are just looking at the next move. It’s only when you watch it all back that it really dawns on you – that was a good lap! Hopefully next year we will be a bit further up the grid and we won’t need to overtake that many cars…”

Kimi Räikkönen

The Portuguese Grand Prix

Kimi Räikkönen fans didn’t have much to cheer in 2020, as Alfa Romeo suffered a competitive slump of a similar magnitude to Haas. Ferrari customer status was not the thing to have in the year of coronavirus… But the Portuguese Grand Prix provided brief cause for celebration.

Technically, this award should probably be called ‘first lap of the year’, because Räikkönen’s initial launch from 16th wasn’t great. In fact, by the first corner he’d actually lost a place to teammate Antonio Giovinazzi. But what followed was utterly spectacular, and worthy of this prize.

Räikkönen passed George Russell’s Williams around the outside exiting Turn 1; Daniil Kvyat’s Alphatauri round the outside under braking for the Turn 3 hairpin; got back past Giovinazzi on the exit of that same corner; overtook Sebastian Vettel’s Ferrari exiting the fast Turn 4 left-hander (where Sergio Pérez’s Racing Point was also stranded); dived inside Lance Stroll at the Turn 5 hairpin; rounded Esteban Ocon’s Renault on the outside of Turn 6; out-dragged Pierre Gasly’s Alphatauri on the run to Turn 9; drove around the outside of Daniel Ricciardo at Turn 10; went inside Alex Albon’s Red Bull at Turn 12; then passed Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari just after the first lap was finished to reach the top six.

Räikkönen finding confidence and grip where others couldn’t is amazing to watch – search the onboard video F1 posted to Youtube if you haven’t seen it. It’s like Kimi is playing an F1 computer game rather than doing the real thing.

“It was great to be able to pass people, but unfortunately the end result [Räikkönen finished 11th] didn’t really give us anything, so that was pretty disappointing,” he said. “I didn’t get excited after one lap – I was looking more for hopefully staying there the whole race.”