Understanding Kimi Raikkonen: Part 3

Kimi Raikkonen, in his McLaren,
revisits his days at Sauber.

What started as a single post comparing the test pilots and astronauts described in Tom Wolfe’s book The Right Stuff, and Kimi Raikkonen’s instructions to his team during this year's Formula One Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, has developed into a series.  After sharing a little of what I’ve learned about America’s first astronauts, I now shift the spotlight to Kimi Raikkonen’s early Formula One career.  But first I must mention his Finnish countryman and fellow racecar driver, Mika Hakkinen.

Mika Hakkinen took the traditional route through go-carts, along the way racking up five championships.  When he graduated to cars, he won three Scandinavian championships, the 1988 Euroseries championship, and finally, the Formula 3 championship, a development series two steps below Formula One.  His performances convinced Formula One team manager Peter Collins to sign him for the 1991 season.  Mika spent two years at Lotus, and then moved to the McLaren team, where he immediately impressed everyone by out-qualifying the great Ayrton Senna in his first race.

By comparison, Kimi Raikkonen racked up fewer championships along the way to Formula One.  After his years in go-carts, Kimi Raikkonen only spent two seasons in racecars, both of those in the Formula Renault series.  There he won eleven times, and claimed two championships.  This drew Peter Sauber’s interest, and the midfield Formula One team owner signed Kimi to race for the 2001 season.  As he had not raced in Formula 3 (or, for that matter, Formula 3000, the development series directly below Formula One at that time), F1 team owners, personnel, and drivers wondered if someone so inexperienced with racecars could handle Formula One machinery.  Kimi would have to race for two hours versus thirty-or-so minutes.  He’d also have to control engines with six hundred more horsepower than the Formula Renault racecars, and endure up to five Gs under cornering and breaking.  The FIA, the supervising body for Formula One, shared their concern, and granted Kimi a provisional license, warning Peter Sauber that they would be watching the young Finn carefully.  Yet Kimi finished in sixth place in his first race, impressed drivers and teams throughout the 2001 season with his performances and his maturity, and finished that year’s championship ranked tenth in points out of twenty-six drivers.

In a profile written for The Official 2001 – 2002 Formula One Record Book, Kimi Raikkonen was described as a young man who enjoyed the quiet life, could care less about fame, and put most of his income into the bank.  Tim Gillard, who had watched Kimi race his go-carts, said Kimi made things seem as if they were happening in slow motion.  “All the champions have that,” he said.  Peter Collins at Lotus, who had watched both Mika and Kimi in their carting days, said in 2001, “Kimi is much more his own man than Mika is.  Mika was a more pliable character.  Kimi knows what he wants.  More importantly, he knows what he doesn’t want.”  Peter Sauber agreed, stating that for such a young driver, in his first year in Formula One, Kimi “would demand, to the point of arrogance, to get his own way.”  In describing his approach to racecar driving, Kimi said, “I just try to do it my way, and if somebody doesn’t like it, I don’t care.” 

I don’t know about you, but that already sounds like someone who, eleven years later, would do the unthinkable: tell his team to stop radioing him with instructions and reminders while leading the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.  “Leave me alone, I know what I’m doing,” Kimi told the newly reformed Team Lotus.  So they left him alone, and he rewarded their confidence in him with their first victory.

Imagine what each of us could accomplish, if we believed in our capabilities as much as Kimi Raikkonen.

Dragon Dave

Related Internet Link
Photo: Kimi celebrates with the team

Understanding Kimi Raikkonen: Part 1

Kimi during his McLaren years
(communicating with his team via his radio).

No one was happier than I to see Kimi Raikkonen leading this year’s Formula One race in Abu Dhabi.  After all, he spent three years away from the sport.  For him to return, and not to McLaren or Ferrari, but to Lotus, a team he had never raced for, marked an ambitious attempt to: 1) reclaim carefully honed driving skills, and 2) make himself an integral part of a team that, under its present organization and ownership, had yet to win a race.  For a Formula One race team is made up of hundreds of people, all employing unique skills developed through years of education and experience.  A team that has not won a race is a team that does not know how to win a race.  An experienced driver can help lead the team in various ways, but he is still one part of a machine that needs all its parts functioning in unison, with precision, and better than any other team, in order to achieve victory.  Yet Kimi didn’t just lead this year’s race in Abu Dhabi, he won it.  And that is extraordinary.

I suspect what surprised all of us, even more than his win, were Kimi’s radio messages.  Most drivers want to stay in touch with their team throughout the race.  Engineers and other key personnel can constantly update a driver on everything that is going on with the car, and how he is performing in relation to the other cars on the track.  Yet once Kimi attained the lead, he repeatedly asked for radio silence.  “Leave me alone,” he told his team leaders sitting before their computers and television monitors.  “I know what I’m doing.”  Why would he cut himself off from such a valuable source of information?

Recently, I’ve been reading The Right Stuff.  Author Tom Wolfe describes not only the experiences and training of the men who would become our nation’s first astronauts, but the mindset of these who would climb inside a metal canister bolted onto a rocket and be blasted into space.  The first astronauts were drawn from the ranks of pilots who tested the military’s experimental aircraft.  They were were used to watching their fellow pilots die. 

Consider Michael Collins, who would eventually travel into space aboard Gemini 10, and pilot the command module for Apollo 11.  But long before these triumphs, he experienced one particular period in which he saw over ten of his friends die.  These were men he flew with during the day, and socialized with during evenings and weekends.  His wife Jane began suffering from hallucinations, fearing every day that a base official would show up at their front door to announce that her husband was just the latest casualty in a regrettable series of accidents.  Yet her husband retained his enthusiasm for flying these incredibly dangerous machines. 

Michael Collins’ experience was not unusual.  Eventually, “the Navy would compile statistics showing that for a career Navy pilot…there was a 23 percent probability that he would die in an aircraft accident.  This did not even include combat deaths, since the military did not classify death in combat as accidental.”  Wolfe goes on to say that pilots stood a 56% chance of needing to eject from their aircraft at some point in their careers.  With such experimental aircraft, ejecting could destroy joints, rip off limbs, otherwise disfigure them, or still cost them their lives.  So many pilots opted to wrestle a recalcitrant aircraft to the ground, rather than risk ejection.   

What was the psychology of these men?  What type of personality did they develop that allowed them to routinely face such dangers?  And what did these men have in common with Formula One driver Kimi Raikkonen?  Hey, relax!  I’ll address that in Part 2. 

Trust me.  I know what I'm doing.

Dragon Dave

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