Kimi Raikkonen’s Mouth Bets It’s All Over Bar The Season

There’s nothing like watching someone rich and successful go off the rails. The celebrity stories of momentary madness and bizarre behavior are legendary but this week it’s been Kimi Raikkonen who seemed to throw caution to the wind being a little snide about the F1 supremo at an event sponsored by his team, Ferrari.

Those of you who like to bet on sports in Finland will be aware by now I can barely mention the country without lamenting the spectacular slow motion car crash that is the end of Kimi Raikkonen’s Formula One career. His position at Ferrari was in doubt even before the 2015 season got underway, and then it seemed to conspire against him to ensure that there was no way back. The odd podium cuts little ice at Ferrari who want them every other weekend.

Finnish Grand Prix

• Kimi says it’s “unrealistic”
• Admits Bernie just needs cash
• Huge costs involved with project

However Ferrari struggle to win the few races they have not because of the standard of their drivers, per se, Vettel and Raikkonen are both masters of their trade, but more out of a sheer inability to match the vastly better performance of the Mercedes piloted by Rosberg and Hamilton. No one else can either, indeed it takes Mercedes having an exceptionally poor day for anyone else to get a race at all, and Kimi Raikkonen has needed wins to answer his critics.

Denied any realistic possibility of a win just based on the performance of the cars alone, Kimi Raikkonen’s season has also been notable for its horrible run of bad luck, misfortune and unforced errors. These have ranged from his pit crew making school-boy errors to his own lapse of judgment causing his car mount Alonso’s in a pointless collision, but whomever has been to blame it has all but signed someone else’s name on his drive for next season.

No Place Left For Kimi Raikkonen?

With the younger generation of drivers so clean cut they could be used to shave with, a facility few of them seem to need themselves, their robotic team-approved comments, answers and activities are characterless at best. These posh chinless wonders in over-priced go-karts each gambling news of their move to a tax haven won’t ruin their reputation with the fans back home are one of the reasons F1 has become so dull, and Kimi Raikkonen doesn’t do dull.

The drivers have always been posh and from the well-off classes, but in days gone by they were the unfortunate wastrels or playboys, the show-offs and lunatics, (anyone remember James Hunt?) these days their lack of charismatic presence is so startlingly obvious that Bernie Ecclestone positively wets himself every time one of them stays out after bedtime and gets themselves in the newspapers. The teams might want sober and responsible but the sport doesn’t need it.

Formula One is eating itself from the inside as the ego-driven competition reaches such a pinnacle of performance amongst the drivers that the cars are the lion-share of influencing factors in the win, skills are almost ubiquitous, be they Kimi Raikkonen or whomever, Mercedes’ spending on research and development isn’t. However like the kid that eats too much chocolate cake and becomes ill, Mercedes domination is having a negative impact on the sport which won’t do them much good in the long run.

Kimi Raikkonen Comments On Cash

Kimi Raikkonen doesn’t really fit in to this new template for drivers, his comments over the years indicating that perhaps he’s a driver born a little too late to be one of the true greats of the sport, and recently he’s once again demonstrated why teams aren’t as fond of the loveable rogue behind the wheel as they once were. If you’re Finnish gambling laws nature would make his impending demise focus his mind and make him more of an “on-message” kinda guy, you’d be losing.

At an event in Helsinki sponsored by Ferrari Kimi Raikkonen was approached by a game member of the press who asked him his opinion on the proposals for a Finnish Grand Prix which surfaced just this last week. “I think it’s a bit of an unrealistic idea.” Said Kimi with his usual bluntness, which would be par for the course, but evidently his run of bad luck in Formula One has left Kimi Raikkonen a little bitter, because he added; “Of course, if someone has put the right amount of money in Bernie’s pocket, then it could happen even next year.” Meeeoowwww Kimi, meeeooowww.

The sport itself is back from its summer break this weekend with the Belgian Grand Prix and if the odds at ComeOn! Sportsbook are anything to go by it should be another Mercedes dominated show. Hamilton is favorite on 1.52, Rosberg on 3.40 and the odds for the either of the Ferrari drivers winning are in double figures. The sport needs more people like Kimi Raikkonen not fewer, more character than the teams have performance, but Kimi’s big mouth might not be the best advert for the concept.

UPDATE
News just came out over the weekend, that Ferrari actually extended Raikkonen’s contract. Go figure.