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Alfa Romeo, formerly Sauber, is more than impressed with Kimi Raikkonen.
Raikkonen actually started his F1 career at Sauber as a controversially-inexperienced 21-year-old, with Beat Zehnder as the team manager. Zehnder is still at Hinwil, and he told Auto Motor und Sport he is now even more impressed with Raikkonen after his 21 wins and the 2007 title.
“Kimi drives without instructions,” Zehnder enthused. Indeed, Raikkonen is famous for once telling his Lotus engineer over the radio: “Leave me alone, I know what I’m doing.”
Alfa Romeo is even somewhat of a one-driver team at present, as Antonio Giovinazzi has scored just 1 of the team’s 31 points so far in 2019. “We let him down a bit at the beginning of the season,” Zehnder said of the Italian. “But now he is improving more and more.”
But 39-year-old Raikkonen, he says, is a different thing entirely.
“Kimi does it all by himself,” said Zehnder. “He understands everything.
“The engineers discuss with each other whether we need to change an engine setting, but at that very moment, Kimi changes it on his own. He knows exactly what he has to do and when,” he said.
Meanwhile, Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel has urged Formula 1 chiefs to “make sure we string the field together more in dry conditions”, after a string of entertaining races in wet conditions.
The French Grand Prix was described as dull as Lewis Hamilton won from pole to flag to give Mercedes their 10th consecutive win of the season.
Hamilton was quick to urge fans and pundits not to “point the fingers at the drivers because we don’t write the rules”.
He added: “This is a constant cycle of Formula One, for years and years and years even before I got here, it’s because of the way Bernie [Ecclestone] had it set up and the decisions that were made then are still the same.” — Wheels24.
Online Reporter