The alarm clock goes off at 4.14 in the morning in Karlstad hotel. It means that the working day has started for both Kimi and especially his personal trainer Mark Arnall.Ahead of them is a 110 km drive to the service park. There they will have a 20 minute breakfast.
Arnall is responsible for Red Bull Citroen junior team's both drivers and co-drivers drink supplies. Räikkönen gets two drink-bags in his car and Ogier gets two backpacks containing sportdrinks.
The service is in the noon. This is when the drivers quickly eat and Arnall fills the drink supplies to the cars.
The day ends when it's dark. After that they drive to the hotel where the bed is calling about 9-10 in the evening when you have to get up in the morning before the rooster in the henhouse does.
Arnall has been with Räikkönen ever since Kimi went to McLaren in 2002. His switch from F1 to WRC was also a big jump for his training guru.
– A racer has to be able to concentrate in the driving every moment. The trainer's job is to make sure that the driver is able to do that all the time both mentally and physically, Arnall listed.
– In this sense the difference between a F1- and a rally-driver is huge. When a F1-driver drives about 20 laps during in practice, then one hour in qualification and usually one hour and 40 minutes in the race, it leaves a lot of time to treat the physical and mental aspect.
– In rally it's completely different when you get going in the morning, drive about 10-20 minutes, then eat quickly during service and drive again intensively the afternoon. We get to the hotel in the evening and Kimi wants to go to sleep as fast as possible. Therefore the massage and after-treatment is really short. Of course if Kimi's back is in a condition that he needs a longer treatment, then it has to be done at the expense of his night sleep.
– It's going to be especially challenging to keep Kimi's physical and mental storages at the same level in hot races, Arnall thinks.
Physically and mentally the rally career is extremely tough for Räikkönen at this stage. Kimi has never before had to dig up his car with a shovel for 30 minutes and sweat as much as in some of the hottest GP's somewhere in Malaysia.
The mental bruises are a different thing. Being mentally strong Kimi seems to be able to take these setback as a part of his tough school in order to achieve a top speed in rally.
Source: Turun Sanomat
Courtesy: Nicole Planet-F1
