Kimi Räikkönen has kept a low profile when it came to his continuance in rally so his plans came sort of behind the tree when his participation in Rally Sweden was confirmed on Monday.
A mysterious Ice1Racing that is closely connected to the finnish driver registered Räikkönen and Kaj Lindström to the opening rally in February.
Räikkönen will now continue as his own master in Citroen's junior-team. They have preliminary agreed upon a WRC-program with 10 rallies which means he will skip three races abroad.
The contract guarantees in practice that Kimi gets to drive in those races where he has the best chances to measure his development curve. Of course it's completely possible that Räikkönen would finally drive the whole WRC-season with 13 rallies.
Now that they are driving with different cars in WRC and Räikkönen has experience from most rallies in the calendar he should get a little closer to the tougher than tough top. Yet the big points are still difficult to score.
With his decision the track driver sends out a message to the world that there is life outside F1.
I interviewed Räikkönen last August in Germany. There he let me understand that F1 doesn't interest him or at least the possibilities that at the time were available at that point of the season.
The rally continuance didn't come easily though. It's still not sure if Kimi gets to drive the best car in the serie but at least Citroen's list of merits from earlier years is of a class that it probably remains, even with the changes, as the most competitive car.
Räikkönen doesn't get to train with the new DS3 in Arctic-rally because they have so few cars that they don't have a car to give for Rovaniemi.
Turun Sanomat
HEIKKI KULTA
Courtesy: Nicole
