Will The Iceman Deliver?

For a Kimi Raikkonen fanatic like myself, 2008 was a year to forget and while enough has been said and written about "The Iceman's" performance last year, I was surprised to see Ferrari team principal Stefano Domenicali's veiled remarks about Kimi's future.

The naysayers will probably state that this is just another statement in defense of someone who clearly wasn't performing last year in what was probably the best car on the the F1 grid.

I beg to differ. Yes, I am a big Kimi fan, but for certain reasons. I fully agree with the comments that Steve Slater (my favorite F1 commentator) made last year when he said that Kimi along with Alonso and Kubica are probably the most talented race drivers on the grid (sorry Lewis!).

Whether or not critics believe in the above statement, I think people will agree to a great degree that Kimi has not been a hot favorite of lady luck over the years. He had, I believe a couple great chances of becoming world champion when he was with McLaren only to be robbed due to reliability issues.

While 2008 was an off year, given the kind of introvert that Kimi is (in public) no one except close friends and family know what exactly went wrong. Was it lack of motivation? Was it a car that did not suit his driving style?

I cannot quite figure it out because, he had 10 fastest laps in the year and if the car did not really suit him how did he manage to get so many fastest laps? (The reason could be the popular argument that he wasn't able to get the tyre temperatures to optimal levels early on).

If he did have the motivation, why go after just lap records and not the title? These are answers that only Kimi knows.

Having said that he seems to be very happy with the new F60 and has done pretty well during the winter testing. But then again, 2009 could be the year of anyone due to the radical changes that the fans will literally see in Melbourne this weekend (most obvious of course is the rear portion of the car with the higher and narrower wings).

I wonder if Ferrari will attempt to introduce KERS in Melbourne given that they had a couple of small incidents with the KERS cooling system during testing. If not, I believe BMW could be at a big advantage during qualifying with the 86 BHP of extra power at their disposal.

Coming back to Kimi, if the rumours of him being asked to leave the Scuderia at the end of the season if he does not perform are true, he better pull up his racing socks and get ready for some serious racing.

On the other hand, I beleive Kimi being the guy that he is will not bother about paddock rumours and will let his racing do the talking. My money is still and always will be on the Iceman to deliver and bring back the World Championship to the Scuderia camp!

Go Kimi!