Kimi Raikkonen has announced that he will call time on his F1 career following the season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.
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Legendary racer Kimi Raikkonen recently announced his decision to bow out of Formula 1 at the end of 2021, with the season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix marking his final race. Raikkonen has now contested 18 and a half seasons in motorsport’s top flight, with 21 race wins under his belt, and having won the 2007 World Championship for Ferrari. The legendary racer said he had “no regrets” about his journey in the sport while speaking with the media ahead of the Dutch Grand Prix.
Raikkonen further believes that he did not have a specific strength that could be termed his greatest.
“I don’t know if I have one! I had a good run, I’m happy with what I achieved. Obviously you want to win and it’s not easy to win. I wanted to win a championship, I got close quite a few times and managed to win it with Ferrari, so happy that it happened, especially with them,” he said as quoted by Formula 1’s official website.
“But the rest, strength or not strength, I don’t care. I had fun and I did it my way, and I wouldn’t change a single thing even if I could, because otherwise then maybe we wouldn’t be sitting here today if you changed one thing along the way. No complaints – I cannot really complain,” he added.
Raikkonen has always held an open mindset with regard to pursuing other interests outside Formula 1, with the Finn having competed in NASCAR and the World Rally Championship over the years, as well as backing his own professional motocross team. However, he does not have a certain idea about the plans in store for him following retirement from F1.
“No plans. I don’t want to have some schedule put on, because obviously the last 18, 19 years in F1, since I started, I did rally in those two years [away from F1 in 2010 and 2011] there was always a schedule, always what is coming next and what is this date and that date. So I don’t want that,” he said.
“That’s for sure one of the big reasons why I want to also do something else. Obviously there’s other schedules: family, the kids’ schools and kindergartens and that stuff. But I don’t want the family life to be dictated by when is the next race or test or flight or next work. I’m not in a rush, and I’ve not even thought about it at all. Obviously I’ve known this situation for quite a while, so there’s always obviously opportunities to do this or do that, but right now I’m not interested to even think about it,” added father-of-two Raikkonen.
The legendary racer admitted that his maiden triumph for McLaren at the 2003 Malaysian Grand Prix was of special significance when asked to reflect on the favourite of his 21 victories in the sport.
“Obviously every win is different. Some came more easily than others. There were more important ones than others and for sure something like in 2007, especially the end of the year, they were more important than others. But something like some wins in Spa where we definitely didn’t have the speed with the car, or Japan [in 2005] was a hectic weekend overall and everything,” said Raikkonen
“But they’re all good and you always have to fight for it, so I wouldn’t say that there’s one that’s more special than others. Winning the first one is always a difficult one and it’s kind of different than the rest of them. Will I miss the racing?. I don’t know. I’ve done it so long that I doubt that I’ll start to miss it that much,” he concluded.
