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And so he’s back at Sauber, now called Alfa Romeo, the team where he spent his rookie F-1 season in 2001. From 2002 through ’18, Raikkonen always drove for top teams — McLaren, Lotus F1 Renault and Ferrari. Does a driver have a bigger role to play in a smaller team compared to his job with a top team?
“I don’t think there’s much difference,” he said. “Unfortunately, in F-1 there are a limited number of cars that can win races right from the start of the year. Only a few teams have the budget and the people to make cars that can challenge at the front, so hopefully, with the new rules that might change but it may also not change, who knows?
“I don’t know if a driver makes a bigger difference in a smaller team,” he continued. “If it’s a brand-new team, then an experienced driver can make a difference, and maybe when you work with fewer people you can make a bigger difference, but it depends on so many things.”
Among the reasons Raikkonen gave for returning to the team was that it was very close to home (both are based in Switzerland), he still knew a lot of people from his first F-1 year with them and it was a tight unit. Does Alfa Romeo Sauber keep the family-like feeling there was 20 years ago when Peter Sauber was running the team?
“Yes,” Raikkonen confirmed. “Obviously, if you compare it to a top team, we are a smaller team. There are fewer people, so it feels a bit different because of that. But I think we have a good group of people. We obviously also have some limitations because of the budget and the amount of people we have. We know our situation and we just try to make the best out of it.”
THE NUMBERS
The sweeping changes to the 2021 rules package — including F-1’s first budget cap — are designed to create better racing and to close the gap between the big and mid-field teams. Given what those regulations are supposed to achieve, will that help determine if Raikkonen would like to renew his contract with Alfa Romeo Sauber and continue racing in 2021?
“I don’t think so because nobody knows what will really happen until the cars are already running,” he said. “The 2021 cars will be built in February of 2021. I will have to commit to a new contract well before that. If you’re planning to race you have to prepare your contract many months before, so I cannot leave it until the first test of the 2021 cars to make my mind up.”
Of course, there is a flip side to this. Will the team want to sign Raikkonen or one of the younger drivers coming into their prime?
Raikkonen was 21 years old when he made his F-1 racing debut during the 2001 Australian Grand Prix. The season kicks off at the same track this season and later in the year Raikkonen will surpass the record of 323 F-1 starts held by Rubens Barrichello.
He always says that numbers mean nothing to him, like being 40 is a number and racing in more than 300 grands prix is just a number. But those are not random numbers, they mean something, so why does he dismiss them?
“At the moment they’re just numbers for me, they don’t mean anything,” Raikkonen insists, “but maybe in the future when I’ll look back, I think that for sure they’ll mean more. Now I’m not thinking my next race is going to be my grand prix 300 and something. I’m only thinking it’s the next race and I want to do well. That’s how it goes, but after you stop you will start looking at it in a different way.”
But if someone had told him when he joined Sauber back in 2000 that he would compete in more than 300 F-1 races, would he have believed it?
“For sure I wouldn’t have believed it. I didn’t have a plan anywhere and it depended on so many things, especially in F-1,” Raikkonen acknowledged. “Obviously, I stopped F-1 once and then came back, but it was nothing planned.”
He didn’t have a plan back then, but does he have a plan now?
“No, I have a contract for 2020, but in F-1 you never know with the contracts,” he said. “We’ve proven that also during the years. I have a contract for this year, but I don’t really have a plan beyond that.”
Raikkonen will turn 42 on Oct.17, 2021. But then age is just a number.