By Wang Meng Meng
Sports Correspondent
meng@sph.com.sg

 

IN THE well-oiled world of Formula One, most drivers are media-trained to death, have an entourage organising their lives and are each seen as a mini coporation.

But scrape beneath that PR-gloss, there is at least one old-school driver, with his own rules, his own character and his own mysterious ways.

Give Kimi Raikkonen a rabbit to chase and that is all that he cares about.

Forget about the niceties, the PR drivel and mountains of technical information, the Finn just wants to race and nothing else.

This is a point he made in Singapore.

He showed up at sponsor events and walked the track wearing a red Ferrari shirt, camouflaged bermudas and slippers combo on Friday.

He mumbled when asked about Crashgate and his future with the Scuderia but his answer is clear: He has nothing much to say simply because he is not Nelson Piquet Junior/Pat Symonds/Flavio Briatore and nothing official has come from Ferrari on his rumoured departure.

Raikkonen, who has said that he will give his best at SingTel Singapore Grand Prix, tempered his statement when he explained his current poor form — it is the machine that takes the blame.

This is a point he made at a Shell event at ION Orchard, a comment he repeated again at St James Power Station, where he appeared at a Puma party.

Ferrari will not be pleased to hear that but chances are, he probably doesn't care.

This is a man so laidback that on his F1 debut for Sauber in 2001 at the Australian Grand Prix, he was asleep 30 minutes before the race before he went on to score a championship point at the age of 21.

Six years later, he almost fell asleep inside his scarlet machine at the same event.

Ferrari engineers struggle to comprehend him as the team radio would go silent, only for it to be broken by Raikkonen's whispers.

Only one man in the garage understood what those short, clipped sentences meant — Andrea Stella, an engineer.

Thus, the "Kimi-translator" was promoted to be Raikkonen's personal race engineer as the conduit between pilot and pit wall.

That is a topic from The Straits Times that brought a smile for longer than usual from the dude they dub "Iceman".

See, he is not that arrogant, ignorant snob some have tried to paint him out to be. Beyond the deadpan, this is a man who knows how to joke.

Somebody once asked what his tires felt like. "Rolled as usual," he replied, poker-faced as usual.

When Lewis Hamilton described his first F1 win as "better than having sex". Raikkonen's simply was: "Maybe he never had sex."

He may not be a quote machine. But sometimes, less is more.

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