Great pic

Let´s keep in mind Kimi wasn´t looking for easy way out. He was looking for challenge, and considering WRC is further from F1 than almost any motorsport on 4 wheels, one could argue he took the biggest challenge out there.

If multimillionaire like KR willingly switches flashy F1 paddock, VIP parties and own castle in Switzerland to shovelling snow on Swedish countryside...hell, I like it!

"Those wings must be here somewhere"

That just about sums it all up, well said.

"I stole this shovel from a Smurf"

If I were Kimi I would be pretty relieved now actually. Ok, he did the pirouette and ruined the date, but now he is free to enjoy the party. Maybe he will make some more pirouettes, or maybe even start tap dancing, which will keep him from getting laid with a big breasted stage time but he has weekend to practice his moves.

As long as Kaj is his only dance partner I think he'll have learnt something today, i'm going to be brave and predict no pirouettes tomorrow, and hope the Kimster takes his rally shoes and not his ballet ones

Hahahah the video about that situation is fo funny. He's trying alone to get the car from the snow and just smiling to the cameras.

Is there a video? Link?

People on-site have told me that P-G Andersson is the most spectacular driver of all. His lead in SWRC is about a minute over Janne Tuohino. What's even more impressive is that Matt "Young And Hopeful" Wilson in works WRC-car is less than minute in front of him.

Marcus was a bit rusty, but after the unfortunate electronic problem he finally seemed to be in top pace in SS7 & SSS8. Hirvonen has been doing great, and I expect Latvala to push harder tomorrow to claim 3rd - but it's not going to be easy, as Sordo has clearly evolved. Ogier also seems better than last year. And poor Petter, nothing else did I expect of him...

PGA has indeed dominated SWRC, but Mikkelsen was also pretty fast in afternoon. Shame that Hänninen isn't there (any info, why?).

Great pic of Kimi. Thanks for posting.

You can see small part of the video (maybe 5-10 sec clip about that situation) here: http://www.katsomo.fi/?progId=32315

Hänninen is Škoda works driver and Škoda's first priority is IRC.

"Tekijänoikeusrajoituksien vuoksi tätä ohjelmaa ei voida jaella alueelle, jossa olet."
Sounds ugly, I DO take care of my personal hygiene!

Oh shite, only Finns can see it because of copyright reasons then.

Kimi playing with snow:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRpfOn5tIiE

Iceman having playtime on the ice

He was in the entry list at some point.

Perhaps he didn't find funding? IIRC he competed last year Rally Finland also with an additional sponsorship. But yes, it would be interesting to see how he compared to P-G.

Man was grinning while shoveling snow!

Kimi had an unlucky day. He didn't really crash to the snow, he just spun before and then the made an u-turn and his windshield got fogged. He was driving slowly to wait for the windshield to clear up and then he drove to the side of the road and got stuck. And the camera crew just kept filming and didn't help at all

Also, here's the stage where he got stuck behind another car: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2PEQjs2qf8#movie_player

But he's learning and I hope we will still see great things from him in rally. Personally I don't really want to see him go back to F1 because he's already achieved his WDC title there.

I think it's pretty sure he isn't going back to Formula One. You can always hope it as a fan, but personally I think it's almost 100% sure he isn't even close to sign anymore an F1 contract.

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/sport/tomcary...make-it-in-wrc/

Tom Cary (co-driver for Tony Jardine) seems to think Kimi is not going to make it in rallying....

...due to his character. A character he has learned from the Internet

****ing fuckers, they finally go beyond the stupid 25 minutes recap limit for WRC days to a good 47 minutes on Motors TV but... this announcer has to be the worst I have ever heard. His timing is extremely off, a lot of times it seems like he has no idea how to follow explainations up.. this is terrible.

Found this at another forum. 100% agree and sums it up well...



I absolutely love when you can actually hear the ruffling of the microphone when they come back from the ad breaks. This Simon Hill announcer is just so awful... at some points he's talking normally but extremely choppy like those exaggerated William Shatner things and then randomly YELLS words. A lot of times he's talking when they cut to the beginning of an interview and it's like hes' caught off guard. It's incredibly awful.

It is more or less exceptable that mistakes comes. He is not an expert and is trying hard. Maybe by the end of the year he can finish some rallies one a good pace without problems. Kimi looks a bit wild and overdriving. And the swearing behind Al-Gassami

Yeah, I switched off after 20 min It was pretty much awful.

I address this post to the person who wrote that article.

Let's see...

"Of course, our relative positions are down to the fact that Kimi suffered a major crash."

Sir, if that's your definition of a major crash then I would say you have no clue what a crash is. In fact I think you wrote that without knowing what happened to Kimi. Either way you are wrong to write that.

"But the crash, which cost the Finn about 26 minutes on the overall leaders, has got people out here wondering whether he will ever make the transition from F1."

Erm, what? It's his first-ever WRC rally and people are already seeing proof that he will fail in rallying?

"It seems ridiculously early to be saying it,"

Bingo! Applauds.

"given this is Raikkonen’s first WRC event for a works team and only the fourth rally of his career, but he has now crashed his car in his last three events – the Rally of Finland, the Arctic Rally and the Rally of Sweden – and looks to many like his rally driving is on the wrong side of gung ho."

4th rally? Sir, when I read that I started to really question whether I should read your article at all. I understand it is a blog but you are supposed to be a journalist as I have understood and the article has been published by The Telegraph.

To be constructive I will list his official rally entries for you:

1. 2009 Arctic Lapland Rally, Rovaniemi, Finland. January 23rd - 24th. On snow/ice. This rally was the opening round of the 2009 Finnish Rally Championship. Fiat Grande Punto S2000. Co-driver Finn Kaj Lindström.
   
2. 2009 Vaakuna-Ralli, Mikkeli, Finland. February 21st. On snow/ice. This rally was the second round of the 2009 Finnish Rally Championship. Fiat Grande Punto S2000. Co-driver Finn Kaj Lindström.
   
3. 2009 Rally della Marca, Italy. May 30th. On tarmac. Fiat Grande Punto S2000. Co-driver Finn Kaj Lindström.
   
4. 2009 Neste Oil Rally Finland. July 30th - August 2nd. On gravel. This rally was a WRC event but Kimi was not competing in the WRC group - he was competing in Group N Class 4. Fiat Grande Punto S2000. Co-driver Finn Kaj Lindström.
   
5. 2010 Arctic Lapland Rally. January 29th - 30th. On snow/ice. This rally was the opening round of the 2010 Finnish Rally Championship. Citroën C4 WRC. Co-driver Finn Kaj Lindström.
   
6. 2010 Rally Sweden. February 11th - 14th. On snow/ice mostly. This rally is Kimi's first WRC rally. Citroën C4 WRC. Co-driver Finn Kaj Lindström.

Note: Kimi has not taken part in any rally championship until now starting from the 2010 Rally Sweden in the World Rally Championship. So the first rally championship he has entered is the highest one there is. Kimi has had the 5 rallies to practice and then he enters the World Rally Championship...

What comes to "crashing". Perhaps you would like to review how the careers of many of the current top drivers in the WRC started regarding how much crashing they did? You could also review how Loeb crashed head-on into a competitor... that should not happen in rallying, right? Would you say he should go back home and never drive a rally car again? Of course not. The guy has won it many times and still makes silly mistakes. Oh by the way did you notice Loeb "crashed" in the testing for the 2010 Rally Sweden? He needed help to get out of the snow bank. Something for you to think about - put Kimi's "crashes" into perspective.

I know personally several rally drivers and every single one of them has done a lot of crashing. When I talk to them about their cars they talk of things like how they have to modify the front suspension so as to make it less prone to breaking when they crash. It is not if they crash, it is when they crash. It is important you understand this before you start to make comments on the sport to be published by an established and supposedly serious media organisation such as The Telegraph. I will always hold the organisation as a whole responsible for any stupid comments published by them no matter is it a blog or not and I am not making an exception with you and The Telegraph.

"Personally, the longer this week has gone on, the more convinced I am that Kimi cannot stay in this sport. We have been up at 5am every day, returning to the hotel at about 10pm. This is my first WRC event but already the recce-ing and road sections are becoming exhausting. I have spent the last four days sitting solidly on my bum. The stages are exciting, don’t get me wrong, but the road sections do become monotonous.

I cannot imagine Kimi will be enjoying them. And given his dubious pedigree as a conversationalist, I wonder what he can be talking to his co-driver Kaj Lindstrom about for all those hours? In F1, he didn’t have to put in these sorts of shifts and was better remunerated for his efforts."

So you are getting exhausted and therefore Kimi cannot enjoy it? Brilliant logic?

"No doubt Kimi has been tucked up for hours. Or maybe not. That’s the thing about Kimi – he’s just so unpredictable."

Kimi unpredictable? How so? Not in my opinion. I think he is one of the most predictable racing drivers I've seen in F1. Regarding his behaviour he has stayed very consistently the same as he was when he entered F1. That makes me think he is a very predictable personality which is in direct contradiction to what you said. You could find unpredictable personalities from the F1 scene and Kimi wasn't one of them.

Now this may sound quite serious but I assure you it isn't intended as such - I mean I am not angry here when writing this response. Just trying to set some things straight as I see what you wrote is not of good quality. I realise you have probably written that article without doing much research on what you were talking of but you should realise your article will get a lot of attention and many people may actually think your article is very credible and take it like that's how things are in reality which would be rather sad as you would have then given them a distorted view of reality It's easy to write something negative like that but at the very least you should try to put it into some perspective which I see you pretty much completely failed to do.

That being said I wish you good luck writing better articles and good luck with your own motor sports career

Hey, it's cool. He is proud that they are in front of Kimi and there is nothing wrong with that. They are in a complete different segment and he writes his point of view in a blog. And Kimi need to start keeping it on the road sooner or later. It took Latvala quite many years though and I hope he can do it quicker. There is a lot written with unnecessary praise so it's good with some other points of view as well. At least he refrained from expressing things like "after pushing photographers around and eating ice creams while Massa blew his socks off on the race track he was finally kicked out of F1 and now he is here making holes in the snow banks" ;)

Kimi has completely missed the junior years of a rally driver. Or, let's say, he has had his junior years as a rally driver in 5 rallies starting about a year ago. World Rally Champion legends like Juha Kankkunen and Ari Vatanen started their rallying careers when they were something like 4-5 years old and they did it all the way to winning their titles. Those legends crashed heavily many times even after winning their titles. The other almost killed himself at the wheel of a rally car and that was years after he became a World Champion - you could think with his experience he should not have crashed like that? No that's silly - he had loads of experience and talent and everything required to be a Champion as he had proved but he still crashed many many times and even almost killed himself whilst rallying. The fact that he started at a very young age didn't prevent him from crashing often and hard.

It's not very smart to expect Kimi to be on the pace very soon or not to crash quite often. His superb speed in F1 does not directly translate to superb speed in rallying, this should be obvious, but I've seen way too many comments which suggest to me it isn't obvious at all to many people.

Perhaps it is schadenfreude which triggers people to make negative comments about his rallying this early on like in that blog article. Like his rallying career is doomed already and we have only seen him compete in 6 rallies in total and he just started his first rally championship. Maybe they are happy that someone so rich and famous and successful is not getting everything right every time. So when he "crashes" they are like that guy in The Simpsons pointing with his finger and laughing "ha ha". I would rather not see that kind of behaviour from professional journalists who usually get a very big audience and can influence the opinions and behaviour of a lot of people. But that being said journalists are humans too as I have understood so they'll do that every once in a while too.

Well I confirm he was happy o I think he has to have been happy. He save his life by a milisecond
Kimi Video
¿Does he grow up in Finland or in some sunny place?
you don't dig below a car in the snow at least you got a shovel long enough or anoter option is to dig a litle bit and then shake the car.

Hirvonen hits in Sweden.

SS9 4.6s faster than Loeb..

And

KR +54.4s from Hirvonen. P11 in SS9. Wakey, wakeyyyy

It does seem like the road was deteriorating rather quickly.

At least Kimi's splits are working today.

Gronholm was pretty quick so if the track is deteriorating then it's not by a whole lot

Hirvonen commented that he had a good start and the roads are already full of gravel so it's going to be a very difficult day for tyres.

Yeah i think a few have commented on it, wonder what it'll be like 2nd time around.

Well, that also means that he did it right yesterday? Not to slow down and head as first car today..?

OIL AND PROGRAM

Turun Sanomat 13.2 2010 00:00:42

Column 12.2.

On Formula 1 -tracks the oil splashes are ambushing drivers every now and then.

Kimi Räikkönen lost his first GP in France 2002 when he drove five laps before the finish line in oil coming from Toyota.

In rally the most famous oil splash is from 1998 RAC:s special stage for the audience. Everybody knew that there was oil on the track beginning from the sportscaster. Tommi Mäkinen hadn't heard anything about it, he hit the oil splash - and went into the wall.

Finally a motorcycle police stopped the Finn who was driving on three wheels and he crushed at the same time all his championship-hopes. Yet Carlos Sainz experienced his own Waterloo during the last moments of the rally and so Mäkinen was the last one laughing in that championship-battle.

Nowadays Mäkinen is one of Räikkönen's most important trustees. The oil-factor is creaping into the mind now after the rally started with a setback on the first SS that eats a man.

Instead of an oil splash an oil sheik Khalid Al Qassami appeared in front of the Citroen from the snowbank which in these conditions is as out as the snowmen in the old phrase.

Abu Dhabi royal family's rally amabassador doesn't usually drive out but now he had a mishap just in front of Räikkönen. The Abu Dhabi -logos flashing in the snowdust were straining Kimi's nerves during almost 10 kilometer.

But that was nothing. On the 6th stage Räikkönen got the extra program he so feared for that even his swearing quota was heavily exceeded. His attempt to get into the TOP 10 changed into a shovel job to get the Citroen out of the snowbank.

When it comes to the battle for victory there hasn't been any worries. Mikko Hirvonen is proceeding just as determined and flawless as we could read beforehand from the man's whole being.

Hagfors/Heikki Kulta

(Translation thanks to Nicole)

2nd stage has been delayed, because, according to WRC Radio they haven't "for years seen so many spectators"

The Al-Qassimi effect?

Haha, well he didn't say "Thousands in Arab Headress"

Apparently they're going to run another safety car to see if the stage can go ahead, thousands have been turned back

Better than someone being hurt.....or their Headress getting muddied

Agreed, on both counts hope they dont cancel the stage though.

Stage is live, Loeb has clawed back nearly 4 secs from Mikko.

Raikkonen's lost over a minute

wtf happened there ?

Lost some time in the last section, bit of a bugger cos he was up on Al quassimi until then, currently 14th on the stage.

Kimi almost touched the commentators car.