Alfa Romeo’s Kimi Raikkonen is seventeenth within the drivers’ championship in 2021 with two factors from 12 races
Kimi Raikkonen mentioned that Formulation 1 “has by no means been my life” in his first interview since asserting his retirement from the game.
The 41-year-old Finn, who gained the 2007 world title with Ferrari, mentioned he had no plans for his future and “proper now I’m not to consider it”.
“F1 takes lots of time from our lives but it surely has by no means been the primary factor in my life,” Raikkonen mentioned.
“I reside my life exterior and do regular issues and from that facet it is positive.”
Raikkonen will go away F1 on the finish of the season as its most skilled ever driver, with 21 grand prix victories and along with his picture as a singular, no-nonsense but charismatic character intact to the tip.
“I at all times mentioned it as it’s,” he added. “The aim to return right here is the driving. There are lots of different issues however they’ve by no means been for me the explanations to be right here.
“I had a superb run. I am proud of what I achieved. It’s not simple to win. I needed to win a championship. I acquired shut one or two occasions and it occurred with Ferrari. Comfortable it occurred, particularly with them.
“I had enjoyable and I did it my means. I would not change a single factor. No complaints.”
Raikkonen added that he had made no selections on what he was going to do with the remainder of his life, not even whether or not he would proceed to race elsewhere.
“No plans,” he mentioned. “I do not need to have some schedule placed on, as a result of clearly the final 18, 19 years in F1, since I began, and I did rallying in these two [sabbatical] years, there was at all times a schedule, what’s coming subsequent on this date or that date.
“I do not need that. That is for certain one of many massive causes I needed to do one thing else, that life would not go due to the race or no matter it’s, the work that’s concerned in F1.
“So I am not in a rush. I’ve not even thought of it in any respect but.”
Tributes for Raikkonen poured in from his rivals and colleagues.
His former Ferrari team-mate, the four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel, mentioned: “He has been round a very long time and is an unimaginable expertise. Seeing that first-hand was spectacular, the quantity of pace he has proper from the get-go, the power to get used to completely different situations. He earned his place and had a protracted and nice profession.”
Lewis Hamilton mentioned Raikkonen can be “missed” and one other former Ferrari team-mate, Fernando Alonso, joined the Briton in saying he was “at all times truthful – robust however truthful”.
“You knew you could possibly belief Kimi,” Alonso mentioned. “He would by no means do something that put you at risk.”
