Kimi Räikkönen, Mclaren, Kevin Terra discussed on The Autosport Podcast

Automatic TRANSCRIPT

More famous for being quicker and better at McLaren, but not winning the title, taking the title with Ferrari and then it all sorts of goes downhill from there really, doesn't it? Yeah, regular readers and listeners might be surprised that Kevin Terra sourced lists includes Kimi Räikkönen it because I do think he spent too long at Ferrari not delivering what he was fundamentally capable of. The reason he's in the race partly as he did in that world championship is not many people that win their first Grand Prix that they start for Ferrari. He took the championship in a year where he was right up against Lewis Hamilton Fernando Alonso and yes, of course McLaren mismanaged that. But I quite like the fact that the least political driver in the whole season was the guy that ended up with the title that was quite that's quite cool. He did get the job done. And also, although Felipe Massa got on top of him that points during 2008 and then early 2009, it's interesting how Kimmy steps up after masses accident at Hungary. And string the load of good results together, including a slightly fortuitous well taken victory at the Belgian Grand Prix. But I guess the other reasons he's in this one is longevity. A 151 starts with Ferraris, second most on this list. And I think a long-term contribution to a team has to be taken into account. He was world champion and I think he was widely loved by lots of fans. So the Ferrari fever rating, if you want. Yes, I think he should have delivered more Ferrari, but I thought he as a world champion and long-term contributor to the team. I thought he had to be on there. Just before we come to Matt, could you not say with the long-term Ness of raika being at Ferrari? He's still their most recent world champion, so does he not take some hits for the fact that he was there for most of the majority of the years that have passed since. And yet Ferrari is still in the malaise. So why does that not affect his ranking? Well, I think it depends on why Ferrari two hasn't won the championships. And we'll get perhaps onto this with some of the candidates later on this or other candidates that didn't make it in being interested to see which name Matt's going to throw us in a minute. I don't think that you would necessarily blame Kimi for why they haven't won it. I don't think you wouldn't say that you look at the last ten 15 years for the reason that they didn't win the world champions because they had Kimi Räikkönen. I think that would be that would be pretty harsh. In this instance, I wouldn't hold that. I wouldn't hold that against it, but in other circumstances it might be might be relevant. Disagree with two points to that one is I was doing some research for a PC recently commissioned me on Kevin and although it's not fair to say their last 14 years without a title is solely right. There was a lot of sort of reporting around the time of 2009 that his laissez-faire attitude to going racing was quite infectious and that became because at that point he was still effectively the lead driver when masa masa was obviously injured and arguably not strong when he came in and was blown away by a Lonzo but there was a certain maybe mentality although that 2090s and obviously fraud just didn't bring anything to the table without a double diffusion and can rectify it. And also I'd say the longevity point is fair, lots of races and credit to it. But in his second stint alongside Vettel, it was politically advantageous to keep him on as opposed to being particularly well, it was meritocratic, but I think his the lack of infighting between Vettel and Raikkonen helped Raikkonen retain that seat probably a year longer than he should have done. And the fact that he just in a car that was capable of winning a championship. He came nowhere near to the other contenders. I don't think. The other point I'd add on about him being second fiddle and getting decent results so long since the time is that Barrichello, who is a fair comparison, I think, through the Alonso and then latterly levitt, is nowhere near either of our top tens as far as I'm concerned. I think as we said, Raikkonen was better at McLaren. Obviously, champion in 2007. Well, outperformed by Massa in 2008. So I think to him 8th place of both based large off of 18 months of work over a Ferrari career that spanned 8 seasons all told. I think there's a lot of waiting going to a lot of his heavy lifting is going there. And then everything else after that is probably probably doing a bit of damage. I would agree with pretty much all of that. But my question to you then would be who your candidates that you would slot in instead. One of them world champion Phil hill, 1961, just because okay, the Ferrari shark night is a one 5 6 was clearly the best car that season at the rule change. But it was just sort of his effectiveness. So I think the year he took the title of 61 and got two wins and four podiums from 7 Grand Prix, he started of the 8 that season and that strike rate is pretty devastating. The other one I keep coming back to is Jackie X like a two time world champion that never was a 68 where him and probably anyone had a good run at it, but 6 wins from 55 Grand Prix starts at 1111 pole positions. He's a name that I keep coming back to on that list. If this was a top ten Ferrari racing driver's list, feel he would be on it because it is Le Mans successes in these sports cars successes. So that was something that I looked at. But for me, he's one of the weakest F one world champs. And obviously that with a lot of respect because it's what 34 names, I think now, so you're still talking about the cream of the crop, but I don't think that they're rarely in F one history as they have been such a chasm between the best driver and the rest as there was in 1961 with Sterling moss and the rest. I think Wolfgang von trips was pretty much on course to win that world title until admittedly his own mistake at Monza, unfortunately he was killed as were some spectators after clash of Jim Clark. It's such a dominant car. And that was one of Cole's feels wins. One of these two wins. His time at Ferrari three wins, one of them at 1960 Italian Grand Prix when the British team's boycotted. It was just basically a Ferrari demonstration race, two wins in 61, one of which was after his main opposition were taken out an accident. For me, and of course he was there in 62 when Ferrari were winter. It all went very badly. I mean, that's a real low point in Ferrari history..

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