Flying Finn

As most of you probably, or at least should, know by now, Kimi will be driving in WRC Rally Finland this coming weekend!

He's been doing notes yesterday and will do also today.

This will be a big media event, BBC is sending special group to cover Kimi's rally (hopefully he won't go out in 1st stage!) etc.

Very exiting IMO and I've always admired driver's who go "out of the box" and do stuff like this. Nowadays it's only Kimi doing these things but back in the day, there were plenty of F1 champs racing in other forms of motorsports.
Unfortunately Kimi isn't driving a WRC car, but instead, a Group-N Fiat which has 100 hp less than WRC cars so he'll compete against other Group-N drivers, not against the WRC guys.

That's why I've been so surprised about the criticism Kimi has received regarding his rally "career"... "Kimi is not interested anymore", "Kimi will switch to Rally after this season" and so on.
WTF is that? Top F1 driver racing in a WRC even (and driving pretty damn fast) is awesome!

Oh, and to those critics, little background for this WRC event Kimi is racing this weekend:
The original plan was so that Kimi would've not driven the whole rally, but "only" raced against VETTEL at "Killer special stage" (special stage is where two cars race at the same time against each other).
When it didn't happen, Raikkonen decided to do the whole rally instead ("WTF, let's just do the damn rally then!").
in fact, Vettel was still planning on driving the "zero" car (car that drivers before the racers and "clears" the stage) and even had a permit from Red Bull but now that he is battling so hard against Button & Webber, Red Bull canceled it.
Vettel will be there as a spectator and Kubica (Kimi's another good friend) should be there as well.

So, even though Kimi at the moment is the only one who has the ***** to do this (if someone questions the size of ***** needed for this, check the photo from previous Rally Finland below), it's not only him who's interested in this type of things and it seems that Vettel might soon follow his steps and do some special stuff like this from time to time (as long as Red bull "mans up" and lets him do it) which would be cool.

If Speed would still cover the WRC... HD Theatre will but sadly I don't think yet...

A.Wayne

WOW, WRC ! good news, after watching him last weekend i thought of NASCAR...

Streak

Live steam?

I'm searching.

Post if you can find it!

http://www.wrc.com/jsp/index.jsp?lnk...g%20-%20update

ew928

So Kimi drives for Ferrari F1.
And if he gets injured in anyway during the rally, Ferrari will have 2 players benched for injuries.

Flying Finn

+1!

I'm thinking www.justin.tv might have it but we won't know until it starts...

"No pain, no gain..."

Ferrari is actually doing bunch of media/publicity stuff around this, specially good for them now that F1 is on short "hiatus". Kudos to Ferrari for allowing Kimi to do this, McLaren never allowed even though Kimi wanted.

StoogeMoe

Well, if he does as well as he did in a gorilla suit on a snowmobile, he will do well in this event.

I just wish I could watch it. But that's another rant.

Flying Finn

This is his first rally on gravel (previous was on snow) so surely it takes a while for him to get used to it. Besides, Rally Finland is so friggin' fast that it has to take a while before he can "let go". Maybe on Saturday & especially Sunday (if he's still in the rally...) ha probably will be more up to speed.

He got some advice from Loeb & hopefully Vettel & Kubica will cheer him good!
(they both are interested in competing in Rallies).

Tomorrow it starts!

Flying Finn

Some updates after Stage 9:

Overall leader is Finn Mikko Hirvonen followed closely (+ 4.0 sec) by Sebastien Loeb, 3rd is Dani Sordo.

Kimi Raikkonen has been hauling ***!
He's with his group N car is in 4th (out of 45) position in class and 17th (out of 124) in overall standings.
On stage 9 Kimi was 2nd fastest in class and 15th fastest overall.

Pretty damn unbvelievable! This is his first gravel rally and the first day so he doesn't have a lot of miles under his belt.

Guy is a natural talent with almost any vechile, we know he's super fast in F1 car, now is hauling *** with a rally car, in past two years he's been the overall leader in this big snowmobile race in Finland and at the dirt track in Estonia where he often goes with his dirt bike, he's done the track record...

hacker-pschorr

I can dream, is Mika Häkkinen busy?

Porsche917K

dp35

Here's how the rally ended for Kimi.

Flying Finn

That's a shame since he was doing so well, but that's what happens when you push hard.

Here's Kimi's onboard from Stage 11, good stuff.

John H

How do you Finns walk with ***** the size of grapefruits?

Flying Finn

Veloce Raptor

Dayyum....

That language is like rap music: all buzzes and pops.





Professional Racing and Driving Coach