Ferrari confirm new Raikkonen deal

[lkjohnson1950]

Mark Twain once famously said "There are lies, damn lies, and statistics".

[Jericoke]

It's true that I have never liked him.  I find his lack of respect for the audience, both in terms of his radio outbursts, and his attitude to procedures, such as speaking to the media, appalling.  I think that he sets a dreadful example to up and coming drivers and to the fans, and I've never understood why he has such a following.  He is completely unwilling to communicate in any meaningful way.

That is why we're fans of his though.  If you listen any other athlete on the planet, I don't care what sport, they're all saying the same things.  "I gave it my all, the team did a great job and (as appropriate) we won/it just didn't work out/opponent got a lucky break.  I'm just happy to be able to perform in front of the great fans of (wherever the calendar says)." 

Kimi doesn't bother with that.  He does his own thing.  It's nice to have an athlete who is different.  You're right it's rude, and a marginally talented athlete won't get anywhere with that attitude.  At the same time, he joined F1 when public radio communication wasn't the norm.  Just because the 'kids' need to have someone yammering in their ear the whole race doesn't mean Kimi benefits from it.  We've all had those times at work where we are doing quite well, and some one who has no clue comes along to try and 'help'.  We're never lucky enough to tell them off like Kimi can.

The unknown element here is how Kimi interacts with his team behind closed doors.  If he was pissing people off at Ferrari, there's no need to keep him on.  If he wasn't contributing to the development of the cars, a helpful member of the team strategy, why pay for him at all?  There's a dozen drivers just as good (if not better) in terms of pure skill.  The people who know what counts most in F1 thinks Kimi has 'it'.

[Alianora La Canta]

Not only can I tell such people off, but I'm accustomed to it working in a way that Kimi's approach isn't. If I tried telling off foolsplainers in the way Kimi does, they'd get offended, not learn the lesson and carry on messing up. (The colleagues I'm familiar with don't mess up after being told off a bit more politely, but of course every team's people has different preferences).

Obviously, politesse and charging around at 200 mph are not innately compatible (hence the bleep-box gets used early and often in most races), so it's a bit more understandable that Kimi is more blunt... ...but the fact he still has to tell people off for this over a decade after he first brought it to engineers' attention tells me his approach doesn't work. Not for Ferrari, and not for the other teams he's driven for since radio communication was introduced.

Ferrari and Kimi may be happy with one another, but I don't think they're getting the best from one another, and that's one reason why Sebastian tends to do better than Kimi (and why, generally, the 2010s have been difficult for him in F1). I don't approve of his potty-mouthed approach in the car, but he knows how to tell his team to do things in a way that makes them happen. Sebastian does have a dribble of Michael Schumacher's power, but "a dribble" is still considerably more than Kimi's apparent total lack of power in his situation. I get the impression that Kimi is there because they need a filler while waiting for Leclerc to finish developing or an opportunistic "borrowing" of a newly-released top-line driver, not on his own merit.