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Sorry but old news Already been discussed in the F1 thread for about 12 hours.

Apparenly NASCAR did not fit his driving style

I expected this. He could have done moderately well, but not as well as what he could in F1 given the same ammount of time.

Anyways, he paid KB to drive in his Truck?! $100,000!? Wow... Did not know that.

Quote from Cornys :

Apparenly NASCAR did not fit his driving style

I expected this. He could have done moderately well, but not as well as what he could in F1 given the same ammount of time.

Anyways, he paid KB to drive in his Truck?! $100,000!? Wow... Did not know that.

He did say NASCAR helped him get the desire to get back into wheel to wheel racing though.

I think that's because, well lets be honest, he isn't really any good at rally or oval.

He was good but he was too unexperienced. A couple of top 5 WRC finishes in the highest division of rally in the world shows that he could drive, when he kept it on the road

words of a fanboy there^^

IMO he's gonna struggle against his old reputation(I always thought he was over-rated) but lets see, good luck to him

words of a hater there ^^

Imma not a fanboy but people saying that he is no good at rallying are talking crap. Being able to drive a proper WRC car fast thru rally stages is a really special skill and takes years of practise. It's not just about the way he is able to handle the car but the skill of "road reading" is a skill that not many master. He may not be "WRC top driver" good but he is "rally driver" good. Even with much slower cars it takes lot of experience to be a competitive driver. This is why most of the N-group Mitsubishi & Subaru drivers are driving quite slowly.
People expecting him to just simply get there and be able to fight with the top drivers with great reliability have unrealistic expectations.

Quote from IsaacPrice :

words of a fanboy there^^

IMO he's gonna struggle against his old reputation(I always thought he was over-rated) but lets see, good luck to him

words of a hater there ^^

So you think Loeb would get better position than 5 in F1 if he drove for 2 years? Or maybe a top 5 in NASCAR? Kimi was racing against people who've rallyed their entire lives. Getting fifth in a race with a worse gear than the best seems quite a good accomplishment to me. Not to mention that he's had the fastest time of a special stage.

Räikkönen has third most fastest laps in F1 so I don't think he's overrated. The man's fast, one of the fastest ever.

Quote from Juzaa :

Getting fifth in a race with a worse gear than the best seems quite a good accomplishment to me. Not to mention that he's had the fastest time of a special stage.

That's like saying Schumacher did a great job to get the fastest sector at Brazil on his last lap of the race, its such a small thing that NOBODY CARES.

I don't think any F1 driver could have done better than he did, but also I think its fair to say he expected more from himself than what he achieved. To say he did well when he was in the same Citroen Junior team that Ogier proved himself to be 1 of the best, and earned himself the role in the main Citroen team.

Being fast is only 1 of the keys to being a formula 1 driver. Take LFS as an example(and its far less important in LFS than in Formula 1). Joni Tormala is probably the 1st-3rd in terms of fastest drivers in GTR's in LFS. What has he won or achieved?(no offense, you know what I mean though :P)

Quote from IsaacPrice :

That's like saying Schumacher did a great job to get the fastest sector at Brazil on his last lap of the race, its such a small thing that NOBODY CARES.

Actually, it's not nearly the same.Being fastest a special stage is more like being fastest in a qualifying lap in F1. Not nearly as important in terms of the final results, but still. Being fastest in a quali is quite hard isn't it? It's about as hard to be fastest in a special stage.

Quote from IsaacPrice :

I don't think any F1 driver could have done better than he did, but also I think its fair to say he expected more from himself than what he achieved. To say he did well when he was in the same Citroen Junior team that Ogier proved himself to be 1 of the best, and earned himself the role in the main Citroen team.

Räikkönen in his first year had Ogier as a team mate who's driven all his life and was supposed to be the next superstar of rally. Räikkönen did extremely well that year. This year Ogier drove about as fast as Loeb and could've challenged him if not for the team orders. Ogier got a lot more speed when he got into factory team so Kimi would've driven much better in his second year if he had gotten to the factory team.

Quote from IsaacPrice :

Being fast is only 1 of the keys to being a formula 1 driver. Take LFS as an example(and its far less important in LFS than in Formula 1). Joni Tormala is probably the 1st-3rd in terms of fastest drivers in GTR's in LFS. What has he won or achieved?(no offense, you know what I mean though :P)

What's your point here? Are you seriously implying that Räikkönen can't drive anything else than hotlaps? Räikkönen has won a F1 race where he started from 17th position so you are clearly lost here.

I think Raikonnen could have been a rally winner had he gone down that route from the beginning, but in that incredibly talented company he didn't look great. Not that he's not very good, but in that works fast means something else. Just shows how good Loeb is, really.

I expect him to (re)adapt quite quickly. He allways came across as a natural talent to me.

As far as I know he was the guy with the least racing experience (karting not included) to ever enter F1 and he was instantly good.

This man knows how to get prepared for a race:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74kJMhqY3WQ

I liked that guy.

I can't wait to see him again in F1

Quote from blakjekaas :

i liked that guy.

I can't wait to see him again in f1

+1

Quote from Juzaa :

What's your point here? Are you seriously implying that Räikkönen can't drive anything else than hotlaps? Räikkönen has won a F1 race where he started from 17th position so you are clearly lost here.

What's your point here? I dont think I ever said anything about hotlaps , stop putting words in my mouth - the way you work with the team, motivating them. Asserting yourself within the team, generally the political side of F1 to give himself the best chance to win before talent comes into play is where he lacks. He never asserted himself over Massa the way Alonso has. You can only be judged against your team mates and the general opinion was that Massa beat Raikkonen in their time as team mates. Massa got crushed by Alonso. Also Raikkonen wasn't usually that consistent over a whole season, yes he had moments of brilliance but he couldn't have put together a Vettel season like he has this season. Talentwise, yes he has it. He just doesn't have all the attributes around it. This is of course, opinion. There is no factual answer. So many factors make up what makes you win and lose races that theres always an excuse to hide behind.

But at the end of the day, hes gonna answer on the track and prove 1 of us right or wrong. Looking forward to it already :P

Finishing "just behind the top three" in WRC sadly tells more about the current lack of quality cars and drivers than anybody's driving skill.

Quote from IsaacPrice :

What's your point here? I dont think I ever said anything about hotlaps , stop putting words in my mouth - the way you work with the team, motivating them. Asserting yourself within the team, generally the political side of F1 to give himself the best chance to win before talent comes into play is where he lacks. He never asserted himself over Massa the way Alonso has. You can only be judged against your team mates and the general opinion was that Massa beat Raikkonen in their time as team mates. Massa got crushed by Alonso. Also Raikkonen wasn't usually that consistent over a whole season, yes he had moments of brilliance but he couldn't have put together a Vettel season like he has this season. Talentwise, yes he has it. He just doesn't have all the attributes around it. This is of course, opinion. There is no factual answer. So many factors make up what makes you win and lose races that theres always an excuse to hide behind.

But at the end of the day, hes gonna answer on the track and prove 1 of us right or wrong. Looking forward to it already :P

''Being fast is only 1 of the keys to being a formula 1 driver'' It quite obvious that being fast doesn't mean being consistent so there's only one obvious explanation to the term fast= being good in hotlaps.

Has anyone ever said that Räikkönen didn't work with the team properly? Yes, he did not care for politics and that's why Ferrari didn't suit him. Where did you get that general opinion from? Räikkönen won the championship in his first year and in the second massa didn't. It was clear that in the second and third season of Räikkönen's Ferrari career Ferrari supported Massa more. When Massa got injured and Ferrari concentrated on Räikkönen, Räikkönen won Beligan GP even though the car's development had been frozen months ago and the new car was about 0.5-1.0 seconds slower than the top cars when they stopped the development process.

The reason Räikkönen wasn't consistent in most of his seasons is that the car either sucked and he had to push it at the extreme limit or that the car broke down in half of the races.

You can't compare Massa's performance with Räikkönen to his performance with Alonso since he had a head injury between. Also Alonso was hired to be the top man and Ferrari's known to choose their number one driver and support him at the cost of the other driver.

Just for fun, let's use your style of comparing drivers: Rosberg has outperformed Schumacher and Schumacher has outperformed Barrichello and Massa. Massa has outperformed Räikkönen once so he adds to the list. Barrichello has outperformed Button in 2008 so he adds to the list. Button has outperformed Hamilton, who's ''outperformed'' Alonso...eventually getting through all the important drivers in F1 right now (and probably many of the former champions as well).
Result: Rosberg is the toughest driver on planet. Don't you agree?

You'll probably see the fallacies of logic in only monitoring one season's performance and using that to construct an opinion about the best drivers.

Oh, and Blueflame: Räikkönen, Rosberg(has both Finland's and Germany's nationalities), Kovalainen and Bottas all have Finnish nationality so if Bottas joined F1 next year there would be a new record: 4.

Rosberg is German, whether he has a Finnish passport or not /grumble

As long as Rosberg drives under German flag, he aint finnish

Quote from NSX_FReeDoM :

I think that's because, well lets be honest, he isn't really any good at rally or oval.

I think it's fair to say he wasn't good enough in Rally, but I don't think it's fair to say he wasn't good enough in Oval racing.

Quote from BlueFlame :

I think it's fair to say he wasn't good enough in Rally, but I don't think it's fair to say he wasn't good enough in Oval racing.

hes debut in the trucks showed he has plenty of potential to do good on ovals but he pretty much just quit as soon as he started.

Quote from Mustafur :

hes debut in the trucks showed he has plenty of potential to do good on ovals but he pretty much just quit as soon as he started.

Indeed and in a big mental way, Rally requires more skill than F1 and Oval racing combined.

Oval racing gave him problems when it came to cars around him. Not because he was unaware, but because of the aerodynamic changes a car around him would give him. It would end up with him sliding all over the track and going backwards. He obviously could have adjusted to the change and been good at it (hopefully better than Montoya) but he simply went back to what he knows he is good at. Nothing wrong with that.