Forum topic: Kimi Raikkonen

I am surprised this topic dropped since the rumors did heat up before Ferrari did decided to keep Kimi.

I think next year will be the last for Kimi and who will replace him?

Perez think he was close but I think Hulkenberg has a better chance.

Surprised that Williams has kept Massa for another season as I was suspecting that they might look to tie up their future with younger drivers with Bottas getting a serious consideration at Ferrari.

Honda has some interesting time a head as well since Button is due for a new contract but do you think he is worth the current contract or a raise?

I am not a Button fan so I think he will be replaced by someone that Honda wants, but who that is I am not sure!!

Haas is going to be an interesting team to see who they land as drivers as they have stated they want F1 experience in their cars. They wrote off both Danica & Marco earlier this season with Danica being signed to NASCAR again by Haas.

I think you see Gutierrez since he is tied with Ferrari (Also talking to already; Which I didn't know) & T-Mex is a huge sponsor of both him & Perez. Which also has me think Perez might jump over instead of Hulkenburg and with Renault buying Lotus back (rumor still). I think Maldonado will lose his seat and PSV is another huge reason he land at Haas.

This gives at least two major backers to two drivers.

A bot off topic but it was interesting to see Kimi keep his seat for at least another season.

hey? Honda wants Button - he worked with them before and is big in Japan!!!! I reakon Raikkonen will be gone (again) at end of season as Vettel is outperforming him. I think Bottas will replace him and Mclaren will prob replace Button as well as he is getting on a bit eaven if Honda do like him. Good chance i think he may move to Williams to replace Bottas if he goes to Ferrari

The start on Sunday was painful. My wife (she's Finnish) and myself were pleased to see Kimi starting 2nd, and we were both watching anxiously at the start thinking 'don't f**k it up Kimi'.

Good comeback drive though...

Yeah, I found myself pulling for Kimi to have a good result starting from second and sadly was thinking how will he mess this up as well but I didn't expect that.

Poor Rosberg too!!

Its always nice seeing Kimi do well and it would have been great to see what if anything he could have done without that start. My prediction is the 1 year contract was to line up with Ricciardo's contract with Redbull. The possible Ferr engine deal with Redbull I think will only make this stronger, wouldnt be surprised that there will be a clause in the engine deals to hand Riciardo over if he wants to go.
Having said this i predict Redbull will be honda powered next year. They have been shit this year but if they do infact already have more power than Ren and will only get better im sure Redbull will want to do this so they wont be Ferrs bi&%h

Redbull to go with Honda... that would be a massive risk! I think Honda's engine next season will be much better but given the way the Mercedes and Ferrari engines are performing it seems they are the logical choice even if only short term.

Do we think 4 engine suppliers in F1 is enough? Interestingly Mercedes are doing some great work with the fuel to limit engine det and this will be priceless information for the performance of their high powered road cars. I wonder if someone at Ford is looking closely and considering getting involved with HAAS in the future... would tie in nicely now the sport is gaining big interest (probably due to Hamilton and his networking state side).

yeah Ford have some really good road car engine tech, they should get back involved with F1 but i don't think they need to as have a big market share in uk and us anyway

Ford will not re-enter F1 any time soon since they took a buy out package only a few years ago from the American government to avoid Bankruptcy. They still haven't paid this back.

Chevy is the only car manufacture that didn't take this buy out package and re-branded a whole bunch of their cars to stay a float. They also entered Indy Car as an engine supplier and chassis designer in that same time frame. I also think they entered even the WEC with at least two different packages. So if any North American Manufacture is going to make the jump to F1 it would be Chevy.

I don't see anyone making a jump back into F1 under the current rules package after seeing all the negative press that Renault is getting from Most of the F1 grid and mainly Red Bull. Which isn't helping to promote the sport to engine manufactures let a lone promote staying in the sport as an engine supplier or wanting spend huge amounts of cash to improve your engines.

Honda is also in a pushing match with McLaren and have been damaged badly by the press of having an unreliable and under powered engine package. Even though this is suppose to be better then Renault's engines. This is enough for me to say without a doubt that if they don't change something within the next two season; F1 will only have two engine suppliers in Ferrari & Mercedes!!

F1, FIA & the press really need to consider what information they release as they are causing more damage to the sport then doing any good.

F1 is still a very good racing series but it's losing it's touch with what it is & was. I series that pushed development limits to the edge & beyond in all aspect of the cars from engines, tires, fuel, suspension etc... Sadly they have dropped the tire wars, fuel system development and now when they brought back Engine development they bash the crap out of the engine manufactures.

I think back to the 90's when we had the last engine wars and everyone knew that Ferrari had the best engines and that Mercedes where not that far behind. Yet we had no negative press about the difference between the engines from any of the teams. This even included the fact that you had B-Spec & even C-spec engines!! (can all add Honda in early 90's)

I also just looked this up but you also had private engines being built by teams (Hart comes to mind) so you had a true engine war with multiple engine suppliers:

1990: Ferrari, Ford Cosworth, Renault, Judd, Lamborghini, Ford B-Spec, Honda, Subaru & Life: 9 different engines

1991:Honda, Renault, Yamaha, Porsche, Ford Cosworth, Judd, llmor, Ford B-spec, Ferrari & Lamborghini: 11 different engines

1992: Honda, llmor, Renault, Judd, Mugen- Honda (B-Spec), Ford HB, Ferrari, Lamborghini & Yamaha: 9 different engines

This continued until 2009 with the fall really taken place in 2010 with the departure of BMW, Toyota & Honda as manufactures & engine suppliers. In 2010 we had four manufactures of engines from Ferrari, Mercedes, Renault & Ford Cosworth. Second Lowest in F1 history.

This doesn't improve over the next few season and actually see it worst moments in 2014 when only Ferrari, Renault & Mercedes are the only engine suppliers as Ford Cosworth plus out causing two teams to fail in Caterham & Marussia as F1 failed to supply these two teams with the promised affordable engines that they teams needed to stay in F1.

This bring us to the current season and this is the second worse in history in engine supply case only due to Honda coming back to join Renault, Ferrari & Mercedes.

With so little in choice is it any wonder why we are not seeing the best of F1 in the past 5 years or so??

Now consider the press releases about Honda & Renault now; Does it make sense to continue bashing two of the four only suppliers in your sport?

Consider also this for thought both Renault and Honda are considering leaving the sport due to this negative and company damaging press release. What will be left of F1 if these two leave? Yeah, a Ferrari & Mercedes teams only.

Sadly I will not watch two teams fight for a championship that they bought and paid for well in advance.

F1 has a lot of issues and it all stems from changes they made to the engine suppliers back in 2010. The question I ask is when are they going to wake up before they destroy the sport? If they haven't done so already.

Interestingly there are fresh rumours that Volkswagen are looking at a buyout of Red Bull and would be making their own engines from 2018. I think they would be branding it as Audi.

It makes sense to me, the development of these modern engines is really interesting and the tech can be transferred over to the road cars where required.

I would love it if they branded it as Skoda or Seat when they could call it Audi, Bentley, Lamborghini, Porsche, etc.