Michael Schumacher may have had a gleaming new scarlet Ferrari to race for the first time in last weekend’s Spanish Grand Prix, but if the German driver is to blast a path to an unprecedented sixth world championship this season he will have to beat the new McLaren-Mercedes and, in particular, one of its pilots, Kimi Raikkonen.
The new McLaren is not scheduled to make its debut for another two or three races, so Schumacher had better make the best use of his apparent performance advantage while it is there to be enjoyed. For once Raikkonen gets his hands on the new McLaren, say the pundits in the paddock, Schumacher had better watch out.
The 23-year-old Finn is being tipped as the man most likely to depose Schumacher from his position at the sport’s pinnacle. Raikkonen’s great strength is his blinding speed, yet he is also blessed with a remarkably even temperament that leaves him neither impressed nor intimidated by the celebrity status of his more established colleagues.
‘I would say that braking was the most difficult thing I had to become acclimatised to when I first came into formula one,†he says.
‘Everything seemed to happen so quickly and your eyes simply can’t appreciate. Then on the second day, things seem to slow down. It was just that your brain needs a little time to get acclimatised to this.â€
From the way that Raikkonen strolls from the McLaren garage to the team’s lavish communications centre, it is clear that this is a man confident of his potential. From the start of his career he has displayed the skill and uncanny sense of balance that have been the hallmarks of all great drivers. Yet away from the cockpit he is unobtrusive, shunning the limelight to the point where coaxing him into public relations appearances is almost a lost cause.
In that respect, he is very much the sort of driver McLaren relish. Their chairperson Ron Dennis’s management credo is that the team ‘exists to win†and anything else is a secondary consideration. It is said that Raikkonen’s ice-man image represents the McLaren template for the perfect grand prix driver.
Raikkonen has certainly scored on this account. When he bagged his first grand prix win in Malaysia recently, he took it all in his stride. Rather than stay and party with the McLaren team into the small hours, he slipped away to the airport and took a flight straight back to Europe that same evening, his celebrations restricted to a few glasses of champagne with his fiancée Jenni.
One of the McLaren team’s great strengths is their ability to insulate drivers from all outside pressures and here Raikkonen has benefited hugely. Dennis waited patiently as Raikkonen struggled towards his psychologically crucial first grand prix victory.
He came very close in France last year, only a sudden slide on oil dropped by another car prevented him from beating Schumacher’s Ferrari in a straight fight. Dennis can now reflect on how Raikkonen’s predecessor Mika Hakkinen’s long-overdue maiden victory in 1997 acted as a springboard to two consecutive world championships.
‘It was most unfortunate that Kimi didn’t win in France last year because it would have been a big relief for him,†Dennis said.
‘I have yet to see a driver whose confidence did not immediately soar after the breakthrough provided by his first grand prix win. That has certainly been the case with Kimi. Once this hurdle was out of the way he’s been able to continue his development as a driver.â€
Jackie Stewart, who won three world championships in a career that spanned nine seasons between 1965 and 1973, insists that one of the things that makes Raikkonen so special is his ability to deliver consistently good results at a stage in his career when he is still relatively inexperienced.
‘You cannot overestimate the importance of one’s first grand prix victory,†he said.
‘It’s not just a question of getting over a psychological barrier, but you actually begin to wonder whether it will ever actually happen to you. I’d finished second three times behind Jimmy Clark in 1965 before I won the Italian Grand Prix and I was beginning to wonder whether I would ever win a race. Once you’ve done it, as Kimi’s discovered, the pressure is off. The release is amazing.â€
That enthusiasm is mirrored by Frank Williams, another huge fan of Raikkonen.
‘He’s the genuine act, the real deal,†he said.
‘You look at drivers and some have something special and some don’t. When you look at Kimi you know he’s one of the ones who’s got it.†—