Formula One woke up on Monday morning to a very different World champion from the one British race fans were waiting to celebrate. Whereas Lewis Hamilton is a media-savvy member of the high technology generation, Kimi Raikkonen is an old-fashioned racing driver out of the heroic mould to whom a beer with his old friends is as important as driving flat-out to Grand Prix glory.

There is very much a touch of James Hunt about Raikkonen. The Finn may not be as obviously extroverted as the 1976 World champion, but Hunt would certainly have approved of reports of Raikkonen's roistering behaviour in a West End club and his reportedly falling asleep outside a Spanish bar clutching an inflatable dolphin.
The third Finn to win the World Championship can certainly put his foot down in more ways than one.
"I live my life on my own terms and that's it," he said. “People will probably try to make up more stories about me but I'm not going to change myself, I never did before and it's not going to happen in the future. I lead my life as I want and that's it.”

True professional
Yet, for all his obvious zest for life, Raikkonen is a real professional whom Ferrari paid a reputed $34m (£17m) a year to prise away from McLaren.

Like Mika Hakkinen before him, Raikkonen has that unique blend of raw speed and total control which has been the hallmark of previous generations of Scandinavian racing drivers. Some might say he is abnormally brave.
There can be no denying he is a worthy World champion, winning six of the season's 17 races, two more than Hamilton and Fernando Alonso and three more than his own team-mate Felipe Massa, who obligingly relinquished the lead at the final round of refuelling stops in Interlagos on Sunday.

Raikkonen confessed after the Brazilian Grand Prix that he always believed he had a chance of winning the World Championship, even though in the middle of the season he had fallen to 26 points behind the title leader Hamilton, but he had closed the gap to seven points by the start of Sunday’s final race of the season.
“For sure we were not in the strongest position as some point of the season, (but) we always believed we can recover, we always believed we can do a better job than the others,” said Ferrari’s Raikkonen.
“Even in hard times, we stick together and never give up. We saw at the end that, although we were a long way behind, we knew we could win the championship.”

At the start of the year, he had to watch Massa win two of the first four races as he grappled to get the best out of the Bridgestone tyres, which were new to him after using Michelin last year at McLaren. But victories in the French and British Grands Prix on consecutive weekends reversed that trend and set him on the road towards the front of the field which paid off to such spectacular effect at Interlagos.
Raikkonen thanked his team and Massa for all their efforts. "I have to thank the team. They did a great job, not just today but all year," he said. "We always worked hard and improved the situation. We had perfect team work.

Hard fight with Massa
"We had a hard fight with Massa all year and he was unfortunate not being in the fight any more. The sponsors have been a big bonus for us, they have done a great job for us, improving the fuel and everything. For sure I am going to enjoy today. I am very happy.

"I have enjoyed Formula One much more this year than I enjoyed the last few years, for many reasons -- not because of the driving, but for some other reasons.

“I'm more than happy to win the championship with Ferrari, especially in the first year with the team. It is such a nice big family, great people to work for. I'd rather win with them than anyone else," added Raikkonen.

Raikkonen said he realised he had a chance to win the title after Hamilton had an off-track excursion on the first lap, but couldn't be sure the title was in the bag until the McLaren driver also took the chequered flag in seventh. "I wasn't really 100 percent sure; we weren't sure if someone needed to stop in front of Lewis.
“He was seventh and, though I finished, there were other people who needed to finish. It took a long time to hear I had finally won."

The Guardian


THE RAIKKONEN FACT FILE


BORN: Oct. 17, 1979, Espoo, Finland.
F1 DEBUT: 2001, Australian GP with Sauber (finished 10th).
TEAMS: Sauber (2001), McLaren (2002-06), Ferrari (2007-present).
BEST FINISH: World champion, 2007, with Ferrari.
GRANDS PRIX: 122
VICTORIES: 15
POLE POSITIONS: 14
PODIUMS: 48
SEASON POINTS: 110


CAREER HIGHLIGHTS

2001: Debuts with Sauber, winning nine points to finish 10th in the drivers' championship.
2002: Joins McLaren and takes three third-places finishes and a second.
2003: Wins for the first time, in Malaysia, and reaches a total of 10 podiums, becoming Michael Schumacher's closest challenger by finishing two points behind in the drivers' championship.
2004: Takes pole position at Silverstone and defeats Michael Schumacher to win the Belgian Grand Prix.
2005: Five poles, seven wins, five podiums, but finishes second in the championship because of reliability issues.
2006: Fails to win a race in his final season for McLaren, but scores in every race he finishes to finish fifth in the standings. Signs a deal to move to Ferrari.
2007: Wins six races with Ferrari and reaches the podium seven times to clinch his first F1 title. Overcame a seven-point deficit at the deciding Brazilian Grand Prix to surpass McLaren drivers Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso.