The first part is protecting Petrov from rumours. Boullier's already said about Heidfeld and Sutil 'Now I have to choose my words very carefully. Let's put it this way: we don't have a direct contact right now and the door is not open yet, but we have signalled that it could open under certain circumstances.'. Then he's asked about Kimi and has to point out 'He contacted us'.

And the end is pretty innocuous, as well as being hard to disagree with. Okay, maybe a Finn wouldn't say it but not everyone's a Finn. At most I see a little frustration in it, and maybe not even that. EDIT: and sometimes in F1 public statements are used in negotiations.

Utter Bullocks...Robertson is Raikkonen's manager..he cant act independently...what happened according to the 1st autosport was that the Robertsons contacted Renault..theyve probably contacted atleast 3 to 4 other teams.thats their job.

that doesnt mean he's dying to get signed by Renault.

Given this keeps coming up in the press, and on Autosport no less time after time, i think there is more to Kimi and Renault then what some Kimi fans suggest (ie Renault milking PR).

Let's for a second consider the other possible theory that, oh I don't know, Kimi is actually interested in Renault F1. I mean I haven't heard any denials from the Robertson or Kimi, and his future is still up in the air so is it really soooooooo unbelievable? Is it so beneath him to drive for Renault? Like to see someone convince me that crashing about in the tail end of the WRC is any more glamorous or lucrative a career, cos I don't buy it.

Look for Magnum-Renault on the grid next year;)

Q: What role do your current drivers Robert Kubica and Vitaly Petrov play in that?
EB: Robert’s role is beyond any doubt. Vitaly has to show us in the four remaining races that he is the man we can hand over our second cockpit to in 2011 to follow our self-defined goal. If he fails to convince us he will not drive our car. If he satisfies us we will keep him. But we don’t put pressure on ourselves when it comes to our full driver line-up for 2011. Only one hint: we definitely will not wait until January.

Atleast thats a plus...only 3 more months of mad season

i dont think any raikkonen fan would mind him driving a Renault next year(although an RB would be preferred).Personally that would mean id have my 2 most favourite drivers in the same team.

i just want him back..doesnt matter which team

You must be the most naive person I've seen on this forum. After all what happened in F1 in this decade(meaning about transfers and mind games) I can't believe someone would said this.
I can forgive though, if you started watching F1 since this season.

Can't you friggin' disappear for a while... maybe to the point where you actually start making some decent opinions!!
kimi=Begging----that's only happening in the imaginary head of yours.

For your kind information... It's this idiot Boullier who's been making these statements... Kimi hasn't even bothered to say anything about Renault in his interviews.

How did you figure out it is Kimi Raikkonen... & not Renault.... that is begging for his signature! All the while, comparing Raikkonen to Petrov LOL... what a dick.

WDC Raikkonen= Top 3 driver, 2001-2009
Petrov= Worst Rookie in a good car -2010.

Kimi Raikkonen might be infact quite offended! Maybe to the point where he tells that Eric to kindly re-hire the great Petrov...!
Petrov seems to be your favourite driver at the moment.... good luck with that.

As a fan, I'd rather see Räikkönen retired than with a team that makes no secret of the fact that they consider him second-rate to Petrov. No offense to Petrov but it just doesn't seem worth it.

I think this is just some desperate noise from the Renault camp. I think the whole team is going under and they try to keep their name in the press to get even some sponsors.

You sir have absolutely no clue about rallying Ogier is beating Loeb already this year on some rallies I am not saying he will definitely achieve the same palmares as loeb, because you never know what star the future will bring (ask jan ulrich about a certain lance armstrong ), but today he is looking like the real deal.

I think you may be rite john rambo,boullier has admitted they over spent this season approx €40 mil?.imo kimi wont go to renault,i think its a ploy to get more russian money for petrov.boullier said its not about money.!f1 has always been about money

For me, Boullier disrespects Kimi, he needs to shut up and talk to Kimi if he wants him, not to the press

I think Renault PR press works for both parties. Who wants could make contact with Robertsons & Kimi. This is typical fishing.

Merc, RB - who knows. Micheal could retire or Mark if he would win title.

Btw RB could easily solve their contract drivers issue by sending one of them in Toro Rosso. That's why I believe Haime was confirmed pretty late last year.

IMHO McLaren and Red Bull are the only teams suitable for Raikkonen - any other team would be a huge compromise for both parties. Renault is clearly a waste of time and just noise with respect to Kimi's final decision.

Boullier is just a fat(literally) biotch.

Guess the pants are a bit too tight..

Loosen up man.

No not really, it just seems like people don't want to listen to what Kimi is saying. He once again said that he want to stay in WRC.



Kimi is not last in rally.

I am seriously starting to think that Autosport are on Renaults payroll on something they report every little muttering of Boullier, they are also the ones who are reporting this story over and over again, even when it has practically become a non story.

Maby they want Kimi back in F1 too

Keep on hating you loser...

However even all the hate can't keep Kimi out of the Renault seat if HE chooses that it is what he want's to do. Don't kid yourself, your opinion is not shared, and is close to worthless.

It's your experience because...

...and it is my experience, that Kimi "fanboy haters" are some of the worst out there, completely unable to perform any rational discussion when it comes to Kimi, simply derailing it always to be something about the fans, using clueless "points" about his lack of motivation, or him generally being an arrogant prick.

Well said

I meant after his retirement from the last rally and and the reasons he gave for it. Maybe there's a problem with money? But I find it hard to imagine, say, Latvala or Ogier saying:


“I don't think we’re going to learn much more under these conditions, so the sensible decision is to save the car for the Catalunya Rally, which I'm really looking forward to... I don’t want to risk going off again. In some places, you could hardly see the asphalt here with all the mud and gravel on the road. The car did not sustain any damage during either of our two incidents yesterday, but obviously when you are running so far down the order you don’t have exactly the same motivation and that makes things quite difficult. We still learned a lot though and it has been really useful to have had this experience.”

As I said, maybe there's a problem with money, but if I were a team boss with questions about Kimi's commitment, that wouldn't help.



p.s. I think Kimi's one of the most talented drivers I've seen. Up there with Schumacher, Alonso and Hamilton (or, for that matter, Loeb, Gronholm and Sainz).

Last year he wanted to stay in F1 and look how that turned out...

@Santori,

I would not read too much in Kimi’s retirement from France.

The C4 has only two rallies left before it retires. Citroën has not produced any more chassis for a while now. Citroën had another “client” for the C4 this season (Rautenbach), but they could not provide him with a car, because they were not sure they would have enough chassis and spares for the season. Therefore, it is very possible that they are really short on spares.

Of course, there could be many more reasons behind Räikkönen’s retirement in France, but it could be that, this time, the easiest explanation is the real one.

Ogier was driving yesterday at a turtle-pace because he had strict orders to take the car in one piece to the finish line, and the road was yesterday again in terrible conditions. Räikkönen was not going to win anything driving on that road, but he was going to risk binning the car.

And the words about motivation, yesterday Ogier DID state publicly that he was driving without motivation and that it didn’t help, and Hirvonen also said something similar.

That doesn’t mean that those drivers aren’t committed, it means, that they don’t feel like pushing to the limit on extremely difficult conditions when you have nothing to win, and a lot to lose (that includes the possibility of suffering "a big one").

My thoughts exactly.

So he had a chance to look Kimi in the eyes in Belgium but he didn't do it?!


Was Kimi in Belgium during the GP weekend? Please tell.

Dude, you hit this nail right in the head.

I've got nothing against Vitaly Petrov, in fact I like him, but really for a F1 team principal to make it sound like Petrov can hold his seat in the team against Kimi-Matias Räikkönen based on his performance at the wheel of the F1 car sounds like the guy talking is making a fool out of himself.

I don't even think Boullier is seriously trying to get Räikkönen - I think he is just using his name and that is very disrespectful towards Kimi.

Last year the anti-Kimi line was that he was lazy and didn't give a crap about anything other than rally and icecream. Is this the new line for 2010 -- he wanted to be in F1 but couldn't so had to go to rally instead?

Its just a pity the collar isn't , it might have prevented some of the bollocks spewing forth.

Again? Why he pull out of French Rally?

Read what artista wrote he explained it quite well.

No no no, it is clearly because he is not motivated and is lazy.

I really don't see that in the article at all. I think he is determining what is better for his team at the moment. Petrov with a huge payment or paying Raikkonen. I don't see in the article that he thinks Petrov is better then Raikkonen.

It sounds like he needs $$$$$$ more at this time. You can have Raikkonen and Kubica but if you have no money to run the team properly then it is a waste. Remember when Brabham had Piquet Sr. and Bernie wanted the money from the #2 like Hector Rebaque to pay some bills. I don't think this is a talent decision but more a situational (in this case financial) decision.

Plus I own 2 companies and I have wanted to look every employee in the eye before I hired them. Doesn't make Boullier a bad guy. Bouiller may never have even have spoken to Raikkonen, what is so bad about speaking to him man to man?

Hi Captain, what do you think about the fact that Red Bull wanted Kimi to drive in their F1 team this year, the McLaren negotiations notwithstanding? How do you see the fact that the two other top teams (arguably better than Ferrari if we go by the WCC standings of the past two years) wanted Raikkonen the moment Ferrari let him go?

Easy there, tiger. I'm not making this shit up; last year the official line WAS that McLaren is a priority. This year it seems to be WRC but who knows.

I know you're not making your stuff up. It's very consistent with many others. That's why I refer to it as the latest "line" -- something regergerated over and over. Who knows where the crap comes from. It's hard for me to keep up with the latest lines. They change so frequently. One week it's that he likes ice cream more than F1, the next it's that he's an asshole who hits kids to make them cry, the next it's that he's overrated as proved by "x" blah blah blah. Last year it was that he didn't care about F1 anymore and only wanted to do rally. You were now saying the latest is that he couldn't be in F1 so he had to crawl to WRC? That's a good one

But now you're talking about a separate thing. Yes it's true the Robertsons said the only team Kimi would consider in F1 for 2010 was McL. But that of course was a statement with meaning only in terms of relative to other teams within F1. Doesn't actually imply he wanted to drive F1 at all. Sure he may have if nothing good was available 2010 in rally. We did see Whitmarsh very publicly kissing Kimi's ass last year and from what I've seen the offer was considered very large even by Kimi standards. But as we've seen now Kimi was simply dead set on rally. And he never once personally said that what he wanted to do the most was F1. Quite the opposite in fact.

Did you announce your willingness to meet a candidate to a global newspaper? Repeatedly?

So people actually believe in this Boullshit? Or is it just Boullier's negotiation style to call the press just to say how flattered he feels Mr Räikkönen's has presumably shown interest in his team - although not enough interest to see Mr Boullier in person yet? Would Boullier really make comments like this in media if he actually considered hiring Räikkönen? Bloody unlikely.

I personally don't think that anyone believes it. It's just a way of Renault getting publicity. If they really thought they had a chance with Kimi then they would be behaving completely differently. Instead, they are behaving in exactly the type of way that'd most risk pissing a driver of Raikkonen's class off. Raikkonen hasn't said a word about being interested in Renault. That's the bottom line.

But of course, there are large number of people as you can see right here that dislike Raikkonen enough to take the time to find ways of spinning the Boullshit into new anti-Kimi fodder. Thus, the appearance of some people taking it seriously -- they're pretending it's serious. This all IMHO anyway.

I think its check mate

Because on his day, Kimi is good. Very good. And McLaren and Red Bull could have given him a car that would have enabled him to do that. But the moment he feels the car isn't where he wants it, he gives up for the weekend. He reminds me of Danica Patrick at Surfers' Paradise a few years ago: the early stage of the race didn't go her way and she got bumped down the order, so she just didn't do anything for the rest of the race. I see Kimi the same way. If I were a team principal, I wouldn't take him. Sure, he might be able to win a World Championship in the car I gave him - but there would always be a seed of doubt in my mind that it would all be for nothing at the first sign of difficulty.

So as you see, flyer, it's hardly checkmate. It would be checkmae if Kimi went on to win the 2009 title. But he didn't. He farted around for the better part of a year when Massa could squeeze more out of the car without even trying.

Man - Do you think you fully answered the question posted - other than saying that he is good.

Let me repeat that again -

If Kimi is such a arrogant , lazy , non motivated **** , then why would two top teams (both better than Ferrari) even try to sign him up with one team knowing full well that they will have to break contracts in the process?

There really is no answer other than - your theories about Kimi's motivation may simply be wrong.

Allow me to answer in the form of a question: if Kimi Raikkonen were so perfect for both McLaren and Red Bull and his motivation without question, why didn't either team sign him when they had the opportunity to?

Both teams obviously wanted Kimi as a solid no. 2 to their main stars.

But if Kimi is as perfect as everyone in this thread says he is, that shouldn't matter. He would have signed for either team regardless and promptly upstages Hamilton or Vettel with his results. If he didn't want to race against them, that implies insecurity, and who wants an insecure racing driver?

Exactly.

At least not because the teams suddenly found out that Kimi was an arrogant , ***head and lazy to boot.

No one can pinpoint the exact reasons though , but perhaps Kimi wanted to go Rally and pocket the Ferrari change. Because thats most logical.

You guys should start a crazy theories cum mutual appreciation society.

So you agree with me: Kimi didn't join Red Bull or McLaren because he wasn't the right driver for them. He was either insecure about racing someone that everyone in thi thread believes would give him no trouble, or his motivation was in question. I'm a little confused as to which side of the debate you're on here.


Drivers are chosen for ability. Personality helps, but teams will always take the driver of the best ability. After all, what's better: the fastest person on the grid who happens to be the most disagreeable and pigheaded man in the sport ... or the media darling, the most popular person in Formula 1 who, it transpires, couldn't pass an HRT whilst driving a Ferrari?