planetf1.com

Alonso and Vettel are getting the kudos right now.

Is Kimi the unsung hero?
Away from the sport, comes into a new team, car not built for him, has technical problems and loses practice time, up against a faster team-mate (at least as far as age, reaction time etc go).
Finishes every lap, comes in third overall ahead of four competitors in faster cars, stays away from mid pack mayhem in every race which no one else could do, puts in several strong podium worthy performances after the initial period.
What do you think?
I think his season was remarkable, give it a solid A
I can construct a poll but have to think it out a bit.

I thought it was incredible for his first year back from rallying,beat his team mate,finished above Hamilton,Button,Webber and Massa all in faster cars, poor strategy from Lotus cost him potential wins in Bahrain and Spain, won in Abu Dhabi and was probably the most consistent driver along the grid along with Alonso

_________________
Favorite Current Drivers :Kimi Raikkonen,Susie Wolff,Nico Rosberg,Adrian Sutil,Jean Eric Vergne,Danica Patrick,Beitske Visser

Past Drivers : Ayrton Senna,James Hunt,Eddie Irvine,Gerhard Berger,Colin McRae,Michele Mouton

Even with his being away for two years, I was slightly disappointed with his qualifying overall, but more specifically the first 1/3 of the year. Qualifying in Australia almost gave me a heartattack with how the season may have turned out.

You can literally watch as his pace improves throughout the year in qualifying, both as the car improves and as the other teams outpaced Lotus in development right after the summer break. I personally only feel he had two poor weekends through his own shortcomings - Monaco and Singapore. Beyond that, I feel he did a solid job as always. Felt his season was very 2006-esque in many ways. I think the car certainly helped out in terms of tire management early on as the teams came to understanding this year's Pirelli tires, but that type of advantage can only last so long so it was nice to see Kimi's win (despite Hamilton's retirement) come near the end of the season as most everyone was on top of the tires by that point. It felt less of a one-off, lottery-like win than Nico's or Pastor's (I in no means want to diminish the drives those two gentlemen had so please don't misinterpret that).

And in terms of wheel-to-wheel action, Raikkonen wasn't the least bit rusty. He simply gets it. He may not be the quickest driver out there, but when it comes to spatial awareness in the heat of the moment, he has it. Period.

I give Kimi a solid 8 out of 10 for the season's performance. And personally feel he was the 4th best "driver" this year and possibly the best "racer".

I for one am glad he is back and performing at acceptable Formula 1 levels of performance. Two more years like this, and given a competitive car, and I'll be happy regardless of what happens.

_________________
[ Kimi Raikkonen ]
2007 Formula 1 World Drivers Champion

Lotus need to get their act together on strategy side

The car need to be more consistent...and not fallen when its cool...and rise when its EXTREMELY HOT

Kimi kept improving throughout the season, im sure that if in 2013 with the team build the car around him he will keep improving as well.

And the power steering ............. hope they get it sorted. His engineer Mark Slade claimed that the team had no enough resources to pay attention to it.... We all realize the speed of reaction of Kimi is incredible...thats why he avoided many incidents and finished all the race. His power steering need to match that

All in all, he did extrememly well to finished 3rd in WDC !!!

I'll rate Raikkonnen's season for you in American:

F*ckin A!

I'd probably give a very high B+, simply because I think he might have picked up a few more points and podiums early in the season, but seemed to wear out his tires much faster than his competitors, and during that stretch, Red Bull wasn't as strong, and I don't think the gap between Lotus and the top competitors was as wide as late in the season it seemed the gap in speed seemed a bit more noticeable IMO, so I feel there was opportunity missed for a few more points there. It seemed like for much of the 1st third of the season, he was being overtaken or really having to fight to hold a position because his tires were shot and an outstanding result became a merely very good result. It wasn't until sometime during the middle of the season, that you stopped hearing about Kimi and worn out tires in the later stages of the race.

Probably the greatest compliment to Kimi finishing 3rd in the WDC is the level of competition this year. This year may have been the deepest field in terms of driver talent and quality cars that I can recall in a good long time.

I'd say very good overall. The Lotus was not a frontrunning car and yet Raikkonen was consistent and came up with some good results including a win. I hope that he can do even better in 2013.

_________________
Vettel / Raikkonen / Button

solid season's driving

he knows what he's doing and doesn't need to be reminded every second, you should really leave him alone

_________________
We want heroes, but there are few, mainly it's cars - Pedro De La Rosa

He had a very good season, as you would expect from him. HOWEVER, I would like to have seen him confronted to a better teammate.

_________________
I'm a racing driver. Always was, always will be.

No doubt, Kimi had an awesome season after off for 2 seasons, 3rd in the WDC with a win and few podiums finished. I agree with Z3RoadstarTXF1 had mention above, Kimi was struggling with the tires early in the season and struggling with straight line speed as well, he could've collected more points and wins. Anyway, I rate Kimi is a top driver, fingers cross for Lotus to give him better car 2013.

It reminded me of the time he was considered the fastest man in F1. 2012 showed he may still very well be just that.

I was very surprised by his early comments on the steering system of the Renault (sorry, Lotus). People made fun of Jarno Trulli, another super fast driver. And yet, there the comments were.

9.99 out of 10, I would say.

_________________
Use every man after his desert, and who should scape whipping? Use them after your own honour and dignity.

Maria de Villota

Considering he had to jump to a car that wasn't exactly to his liking and with a two year absence, could anyone have done better? He himself admitted that maybe they could've stayed in the title fight longer if they'd been a bit sharper in the first part of the season, but after an absence, you've got to start somewhere. Imagine if he'd already then driven like he drove in Abu Dhabi.

_________________
"OHO!-magazine number 46/2006: - I read somewhere that I drive with the luck of a drunk."

Like Alonso I don't see how we can tell. We can see how many mistakes they made but, without a known quantity in the other seat, how can we tell how fast they were? Maybe Kimi made so few mistakes because he wasn't pushing as hard as he could. (That's an observation not an accusation. Human nature inclines me to think he did brilliantly... but I don't know why I think that!)

_________________
Klaus Kinski: making me question my heroes since January 2013

For me? Him being back deserves a 9.9/10

he only needed to drive few laps so he can earn the 10 in my books which he did.

Seriously though, he did fantastic, I enjoyed his comeback more than his defending year in 2008

Good solid 8/10

Had a couple of races where he looked lacklustre and at times was outraced by his team-mate.

But after a slowish start, for the most part he was absolutely on it and put in a tremendous comeback.

His win in Abu Dhabi for me is my favourite moment of the year excluding Button's win in Spa

Looking forward to more race wins to come, hopefully Lotus can keep him motivated

_________________
Jenson Button
Kimi Raikkonen
Romain Grosjean
Nico Hulkenburg

After I predicted he'd be knocked out in Q1 in Melbourne (he was) I was expecting another Schumi-esque comeback - flashes of brilliance, but more often than not very disappointing.

How wrong I was. A brilliant season from Kimi. The silent assassin!

9/10

_________________

10/10 considering the car. Go Kimi!

_________________
"We were carrying something like 250l of fuel, it was very heavy; waiting sometimes 3 seconds before the power came, and we had between 800-1200 hp. In the straights we had wheelspin at 5th or 6th gear sometimes..." -- Alain Prost.

I'll give him a nine, everything pretty much perfect apart from a few disappointing Qualifying performances but overall a big improvement from 2008/09.

Just so pleased to have him back!, always felt something was missing from the grid without Kimi, secretly hoping Perez does awful next year so Kimi can return to McLaren in 2014 and be given a proper tilt at the title again.

_________________
Support: Kimi Raikkonen, Lewis Hamilton, Jenson Button, Heikki Kovalainen
Respect: Alonso, Schumacher, Newey
Not so keen on: Vettel, Di Resta, whoever decides to red flag when it rains in F1

Could do better, but generally impressive.

Given that was his warm up to get back in to the sport after a gap, I expect more from Kimi next year. Glad he's back, he's an exciting racer and can go wheel to wheel with the best of them without cocking it all up.

8 or 9/10

I admittedly didn't have much expectations for him or Team Lotus. Very pleasantly surprised by how well the Raikkonen/Lotus teamup worked so well this year.

very, very good. wish he had done better at the one race I went to see this year, but could not ask for much more of a year when it could have gone either way.

(some of) the best overtaking moves of the season have his name on it. spa, Austin, interLagos....

hope he has a better car next year.

8/10

possibly the greatest compliment came with the whole bonus issue... they simply did not expect him to score so many points.

I'd say 7/10 - his qualifying performances were far too disappointing for me to give him anything higher, but his race pace and race craft were absolutely outstanding. If he had qualified nearer the top (quite often Grosjean demonstrated the car was capable of the top 5 in qualifying), he would have won more races and been a serious contender for the title.

_________________
PLAY A RECORD KARL COS I'M GUNNA KNOCK YOU OUT!!!

9/10.

True dat!

I feel exactly the same. At the start of the season I loved his return and even argued his performance was almost as good as Alonso's at the time who had another non-top of the field car. However as the season went on I started feeling a bit let down. Sometimes it was his teammate showing more speed but mostly it was because I never got the same confidence or excitement with Kimi as I did with Alonso, Vettel and Hamilton before the race. I always expected the last three to fight tooth and nails for extra points but somehow I never got the same vibe with Kimi. It might be just me and I might be wrong but that's what it was.

Kimi is just Kimi very silent but always there abouts. he drove really really well.

_________________
HAMILTON/ALONSO/RAIKONNEN/VETTEL

7/10

Too often he found himself battling with the likes of Force India and Sauber. Could be the car, but Grosjean was on pair with him for some time, before starting to crash more regularly.

_________________
The end is near

Average points per finish after removing Grosjean's DNFs and one race ban, or average points for all races where they completed the whole race.
Räikkönen 10.35
Grosjean 8.72
So there's no argument that Grosjean was actually better. Even removing the win (if you would argue that it's anomalous) leaves Räikkönen with a 9.58 for the other 19 races.

a solid season for kimi but his win was lucky. lewis owned him until retirement.

_________________

So there are many out there giving him a C 7/10, or a B 8/10. Given what he had to work with, what should he have accomplished to get an A 9/10?

Fighting with Sauber or FI is nothing to be ashamed of if you can also keep beating the McLarens, Red Bulls and Ferraris while you're at it.

Lucky wins...
Button. Australia, due to Hamilton's bad start.
Alonso. Malaysia, due to rain lottery.
Maldonado. Spain, due to Hamilton's penalty.
Webber. Monaco, due to Schumacher's penalty
Hamilton. Canada, due to tyre lottery.
Alonso. European, due to Vettel and Grosjean's mechanical failures.
Vettel. Singapore, due to Hamilton's mechanical failure.
Raikkonen...
And maybe add in Rosberg due to the early season tyre lottery.
So that is 8 or 9 out of 20 which were 'lucky' and not solely due to the superior car and racing combination of the winner on the given day.

Kimi's win was fairly "lucky", but he's also had his fair share of donating near-certain wins to "lucky" racers following in 2nd, so it's deserved. :p

And not to continue off topic, but I think you're stretching it some with Maldonaldo and Webber's wins in bold. There was not near enough guarantee for Lewis or Schumacher to win either of those races had they not had penalties. Maldonaldo drove superbly and it was quite common for the McLarens to not be near as quick in race trim than qualy, and who knows what pace Schumacher would have sustained. All it could have taken was a great pit stop by Red Bull for a jump. I think Spain and Monaco's were up for grabs for sure.

As for rain "lottery" for Malaysia. They all race on the same track. The Lotus seems to be a very, very temperamental car in the wet this year, but that may even be down to the drivers. Kimi only had two or three decent wet races in the Ferrari's from 2007-2009, so he may not be quite the wet weather driving candidate to use as a judge of how good the car is in those conditions. Definitely hard to say.

_________________
[ Kimi Raikkonen ]
2007 Formula 1 World Drivers Champion

For sure, a driver has to have put himself in position to benefit from 'luck', as well as capitalize on it when presented with it. It's not a game of chance where anyone in the field randomly gets the win when someone retires early from the lead, or an incident or conditions change.

IMO, 'bad luck' is something a driver rarely has much control over, however, 'good luck' requires more participation by the driver (or at least achieving a result that gets them proclaimed as being 'lucky' instead of the guy who finishes lower, yet didn't achieve the maximum result after someone else's misfortune but who also had the chance to benefit from that misfortune.)

Huh?

Maybe you're new to F1. A winner is never lucky. Hamilton had a very fast car...and a very unreliable one. Lotus wasn't as fast but it seems it was built stronger. Luck has nothing to do with it. It's how the engineering team approached the drawing board.

I give him an 8/10

Saturdays weren't his best days.

But I give the team a 5/10

Horrible strategy calls and a pit crew that took their sweet time on every pit stop.

I don't think anyone at Lotus expected this from Kimi. It seems he has woken them up for next year I'm hoping.

Agreed, I don't buy the tyre lottery in Canada either, that was quite a few races into the season and Hamilton is very strong in Canada.

_________________
We want heroes, but there are few, mainly it's cars - Pedro De La Rosa

Amazing season 9/10 from me, noone could touch Vettel and Alonso 2012, but he came closest.