Ferrari lures Iceman back into fold
FINLAND’S Kimi Raikkonen will race for Ferrari next season in a two-year deal that takes the 2007 world champion back to the glamour team he left in 2009 and creates the strongest pairing in Formula One.
Ferrari said yesterday that the 33year-old “Iceman”, currently driving for Lotus, will replace Brazilian Felipe Massa alongside Spain’s double world champion Fernando Alonso.
“Scuderia Ferrari announces that it has reached an agreement with Kimi Raikkonen. The Finn will join Fernando Alonso in the driver line-up for the next two racing seasons,” Ferrari said.
There were no quotes from the famously taciturn Finn, whose future team-mate had made it clear he would have been happy to continue with Massa. The Spaniard has a contract to the end of 2016. Massa, championship runner-up to Lewis Hamilton in 2008, had already announced on social media that he would not be driving for the Italian team in 2014. Ferrari last had two world champions in their line-up in 1953, when Italians Alberto Ascari and Giuseppe Farina were together. Raikkonen and Alonso should be a force to be reckoned with, although there could also be fireworks.
In contrast, other top teams have opted to pair a champion with a driver whose resumé is less glittering.
Red Bull have a new face in Australian Daniel Ricciardo, who has yet to stand on the podium, as team-mate to triple champion Sebastian Vettel while 2009 winner Jenson Button has Sergio Perez alongside him at McLaren, but the Mexican is not yet a race winner.
Germany’s Nico Rosberg, who partners Hamilton at Mercedes, has been on the top step of the podium twice this season but only three times in his career. Since the arrival in 1996 of Michael Schumacher, the seven time-world champion Raikkonen replaced at the end of 2006, Ferrari have preferred to have one dominant driver in their line-up.
That was not the case in 2008, when Massa almost won the title, but Alonso wasted no time in stamping his authority on the team when he replaced Raikkonen. Massa started 2010 still recovering from near-fatal head injuries sustained at the previous year’s Hungarian Grand Prix and the Brazilian never regained his previous level of performance.
Ferrari chairman Luca Di Montezemolo has said in the past, reacting to speculation that Vettel could partner Alonso, that he did not want “two roosters in the same henhouse”.
Ferrari decided, however, that Raikkonen — who won this year’s Australian season opener and recently ended a record 27-race scoring run — was a better bet than Massa.
Red Bull and Vettel have a firm grip on both of this year’s championships and Ferrari are already focusing on next year, when the rules go through significant changes and a new V6-power unit is introduced. The team, winners of a record 16 constructors’ and 15 drivers’ championships but without a title since 2008, are not in the habit of re-signing former drivers, although Austrian Gerhard Berger had two separate stints in the 1980s and 1990s.