Kimi Raikkonen is back for wins

Image taken from Autosport.com

Kimi Raikkonen completed his first test back in a Formula 1 car today (January 24^th) in a two day outing with the 2010 Renault. So far there are encouraging signs that he’ll be right back on the pace after his two years crashing in the World Rally Championship.

Lotus’ s trackside operations engineer Alan Permane spoke to BBC sport saying he was sure Kimi’s comeback has the potential for success

“From the first run he was pretty much there…I don’t see any reason why he won’t be on the pace – you can tell he’s a very, very experienced driver. It was very clear we were working with a former world champion. It was a good day.”

Despite this good start, the days since Kimi was announced as the lead driver for the renamed Lotus squad has been full of speculation about his perceived lack of motivation at the end of his first F1 career in 2009 and whether he’d even be able to get back on the pace successfully after Michael Schumacher’s troubled comeback.

First of all, Schumacher was out of the sport a year longer, had suffered a fractured neck from a motor bike accident and is over ten years older, Kimi is still only 32. So to start off with he's at an advantage with his comeback trail.

What will be of most concern are the Pirelli tyres as Kimi himself has rightly pointed out. Most of the grid will have a year’s experience on them now, and with testing time sadly lacking in this current era of Formula 1 it’ll be a tough start for the Iceman from Finland.

Having said that, I don’t believe he’ll find it too tough given time, he is a world champion and Schumacher showed improved form with the introduction of the Pirelli rubber. Something else he’ll have to get used to though is having to start with a full tank of fuel.

Refuelling was still around in 2009, and he’ll have to get a feel for looking after the tyres driving five seconds or more off the qualifying pace, races are no longer out and out sprints but again it’s something he’ll have to adapt to and if everyone else can, there’s no reason for Kimi not to either.

In fact he was fine in 2005 when the regulations changed to races run on the same set of tyres. With the obvious exception of Germany that year when a tyre exploded on the last lap, he was as good as anyone at making them last, as Japan proved when he charged from 17^th to first, although it took a lot to damage those Bridgestones.

The motivation of Kimi Raikkonen is the question many people have been wondering about. After his title in 2007 he went off the boil a little the following season, and was pretty much seen to be out performed by his team mate Felipe Massa, right up to the Brazilian’s accident in Hungary 2009, but it was actually still fairly even. Afterwards he was effectively dropped by Ferrari to make room for Fernando Alonso.

Even now Kimi’s said he wasn’t sure he’d even return to Formula 1 and had investigated NASCAR when he desired a return to racing. But that’s just Kimi, he’s so laid back and doesn’t care for PR speak, or even any PR. He mainly just tells it like it is, when he says anything at all.

So what if he wasn’t sure he’d return, the fact is he’s signed a deal to come back and there shouldn’t be any doubts he wants to and that he wants to win. After all despite Ferrari buying him out of his contract, it looked at the time he’d already decided he wanted to try rallying instead.

He certainly wasn't going to do Formula 1 on any condition, although perhaps that contributed to his poor motivational image, something Lotus's former guise as Renault took issue with the year before. The fact is he does what he wants, so now he wants to do Formula 1 again, that can only be because he’s fully motivated and wants to win.

I sort of take issue with this motivation question, as yes his last couple of years at Ferrari weren’t the best, but he was still quick. If you actually look at 2009, the four races from Hungary he was on the podium four times including an impressive win in Belgium, Ferraris sole win of the campaign.

The car had stopped being developed for a while by then but he also managed to drag it to another couple of top five finishes. Not bad form at all, and surely not the sign of someone not giving his all. Everyone has runs of bad form, just look at Lewis Hamilton this year.

No, the overriding sentiment should be of excitement as he completes a field of six world champions. It remains to be seen if the Lotus’s new car will give him the platform to succeed, the recent ban on reactive suspension must have been a setback, they claim otherwise but they were the team to have developed it furthest.

However, they’re no back of the grid team, they only won the title five seasons ago and are now developing for the future as Lotus. Kimi has signed a two year deal, so he’ll be looking to develop with the team over the coming seasons, and I have little doubt he’ll be right back on it soon enough. Kimi himself believes it, telling the Lotus website “I’m as fast as before”.