Since we are discussing Kimi's performances during 2007 I thought you might find this analysis interesting:
Raikkonen's move to Ferrari was a long time in the making, and it could not have happened at a more difficult moment.
Firstly, he had to fill Michael Schumacher's massive boots.
Secondly, he had to adapt to a new car, systems and team all at once, whilst doing it on Bridgestone rubber with vastly different characteristics than the Michelins he had been racing on for so many years.
Thirdly, Raikkonen had a quick young team mate already imbedded in the Ferrari system, a guy with very personal affiliations to the team and one who is fluent in Italian. Felipe Massa might be erratic at times, but even in 2006 he was fast enough on a given day to outgun Schumacher (by half a second on his quickest lap in the Spanish GP, for instance).
Having been on a steep '06 learning curve under the master's watchful eye, and having kept that line of communication very much open in '07, Massa used his natural speed and intimate familiarity with the Scuderia to great effect in the early part of the season, playing up his friendship with Schumacher and manager Nicolas Todt - the latter being Jean Todt's son, of course.
This feeling that the team might gravitate towards the other driver - and a lesser paid one, at that - certainly helped to keep Raikkonen off kilter in the early part of the season, just as Alonso was not on a steady keel at McLaren.
The F2007's long wheelbase also induced a slow and lethargic nose on turn-in, resulting in lots of tyre scraping and therefore uncomfortably high front tyre temperatures when manhandled, as Raikkonen was prone to do early on in the season, trying to extract more from the car.
By contrast, the long wheelbase made it difficult to bring the rears up to temperature over a single qualifying lap, resulting in poorish grid positions.
Raikkonen's predilection to run long first stints, gaining an advantage by capitalising on his tremendous speed on full tanks and cold rubber, also came to naught over the first half of the season, as his heavier car sometimes got swamped off the line.
Malaysia and Bahrain, on top of that, made it clear that the ice-cool Finn would rather play safe and collect points, than go for a Montoya-like six or a nix.
In Bahrain, he also fell asleep behind the pace car, showing nothing of the alacrity which kept him ahead of Schumacher in the pair's enthralling duel at Spa, in 2004, once the safety car pulled in.
The biggest reason for the Kimster's early season woes, however, came from his struggles to integrate settings and specifically Maranello's brand of traction control (TC) with the F2007's forwardly placed long-wheelbase inspired weight distribution, all of it on alien Bridgestone rubber.
So different was Ferrari's general approach to weight distribution from McLaren's, that the latter's test driver, De la Rosa, didn't even test Ferrari's figures in the McLaren simulator when specifics were garnered by Mike Coughlan, during the Stepneygate spy scandal.
But why did it take up to half a season to match the Ferrari's severe TC to Bridgestone rubber and the car's weight distribution?
A-ha. Again Raikkonen and others, notably Alonso, had been caught out by regulation changes, this time by severe testing limits. Not for teams to simply book another test of thousands of kilometers in order to sort problems out, not any more.
Ferrari's TC - developed to help Schumacher pivot and catch the car in the apex, after an early turn-in - instead only hampered Raikkonen's speed, without rendering any benefit, when the Kimster tried his classic straight lining techniques.
Thus it took Raikkonen some time to adapt the car to him, vis-à-vis the quick fix he tried in early 2007, by adapting himself to the car.
Once he got the F2007 to his liking, Kimi took off at Silverstone - although signs came through even in France (where he won), Indy (where he took fastest lap) and Monaco (where he was comfortably fastest of the top runners during a wet Saturday morning practice).
That the Kimster kept his head down and his nose clean during the run-in to the title speaks volumes for his level-headedness. Along the way, he was imperious (in Britain and Belgium), amazing (with a sore neck at Monza), rock steady (in China and Brazil) and majestic (in Japan).
And yes, majestic also during the opener in Oz - although the car was either illegal or against the spirit of the rules, depending on one's point of view. The stewards, nevertheless, failed to pick up the moving floor which catapulted the F2007 to such a crushing win in Melbourne.
By the end of the championship, Raikkonen's margin of victory was a lot slimmer than it had been in Australia. But having recouped the largest deficit ever over the final two races of a F1 season, the final outcome was as crushing to the opposition, as Kimi's winning margin in Melbourne.
That was my personal favourite. It was a disgrace that FOM bottled out of using that quote for the title of their season review...
