Räikkönen has never tackled the British round of the championship before, so it represents another leap into the unknown for the Finn, who drives a Citroën C4 World Rally Car for the French manufacturer’s Junior team.As always though, he is able to rely on co-driver Kaj Lindström to guide him through all the potential pitfalls. Kaj has plenty of experience of Great Britain, having even taken part in - and won - the British Rally Championship.
Kimi sent this first update just before the rally opening Superspecial.
Blog one: Thursday 11 November, 1800hrs.
“I’ve been in motorsport for a few years now, so you would have thought that I should be used to it by now. But every season I’m always surprised by just how quickly the year has gone - especially this year.
It feels like my first rally of the season, in Finland on the Arctic Rally in January, was like yesterday. Or is that just because it’s so cold here in Wales? Actually, I’m used to the British weather now because I lived for a few years in England. My house was in Essex, where they filmed ‘Footballers’ Wives’. That’s all it’s really famous for I think...
I’ve heard a lot about Rally GB and it’s always been good for Finnish drivers for some reason. We’ll have to wait and see if it’s good for this particular Finnish driver but one thing is for sure: it looks extremely tricky.
There’s going to be a lot of mud, which is something that you don’t see in Formula One very often - unless you happen to be in a gravel trap. We start quite a long way down the order tomorrow and that’s not going to help us because the roads will be in bad condition by the time we get there.
In the end though it doesn’t matter because we’re not here to set really quick times: we just want to learn and above all get to the finish of the rally. We’ve made a lot of progress this year and if we can end the season by scoring some points, this would be really good. Hopefully I’ll get a bit of help from my co-driver Kaj: he’s a former British Rally Champion, so he should know his way round. Or at least that’s what I’m hoping.
A lot of people have been asking me what I’m doing next year and the truth is that I really don’t know. My management is working on a few options, but rallying is definitely what we are looking at; I’m not going back to Formula One next year.
Obviously it makes things a bit easier if we can end the season with a strong result, so that’s what we’re going to be concentrating on this weekend. Rallying is all about experience, so with everything we’ve learned so far, I’m sure we’re going to be in a much stronger position next year. If we’ve not drowned in all the rain by then...”
Source: WRC - Pirelli
