Kimi Raikkonen may join Renault
Kimi Raikkonen, the former Ferrari driver has been in the news and rumoured to be making his way back to the sport. Renault is believed to be in talks with the former world champion. Renault’s team boss, Gerard Lopez said that
there are number of permutations to consider before a decision can be made about Kimi Raikkonen.
Last week news broke that Raikkonen was in talks with Renault after leaving F1 in 2009 for world rally championship. The big hurdle is believed to the financial aspect of the deal, Ferrari had been paying Raikkonen a handsome amount
of money and Renault do not have sufficient funds to match that pay scale.
That may not be the only problem, Renault signed Vitaly Petrov this season, and the driver actually brought in good amount of funds to the team through his Russian financiers.
Lopez, the team boss at Renault admits that his team needs money, and Petrov cannot be sidelined as he is a key reason for the team’s financial stability. However he admitted that having a driver of Raikkonen’s calibre in the team
will add a lot more to the team.
"It's funny because people now think things are going well and we're going to change drivers," Lopez told Autosport.
"There's a certain rally driver that wasn't interested in Formula 1 but now has made contact and is interested in coming back to F1, funnily enough with us, but we're not there yet.”
"It's very important (the financial considerations). As I said, we use Formula 1, and we have to push our team to succeed because we use the platform to do business. And you know, it's a question of image.”
"People like to do business with winning teams, so it goes hand in hand. For us still, the main consideration in this outside of Eric's [Boullier] mission and the team's mission to start winning races again is the business one.”
"And it has become more important now that we've solidified the team, that we've found the sponsors that we're bringing the sponsors that we're doing whatever needs to be done.”
While talking about Petrov’s place in the cockpit next season, Lopez said that in truth Vitaly does not bring in the amount of money people actually think he does.
Lopez Said: "It's not that Vitaly is a paying driver, because he's not, but certainly the sponsors that he brought or that came, which is Lada, have been very good sponsors. But Vitaly was not bringing the kind of money that people
were saying.”
Lopez believes that it is difficult to find the balance between building the team from a business prospective and also making sure that the team is headed in the right direction as far as race points are concerned. He said that
the Finn ( Raikkonen) is a proven world champion and may be the perfect man to step in next season, however if there are not enough funds to back his title campaign then it would not be of any use.
Kimi Raikkonen won the world championship with Ferrari in 2007 when he beat Lewis Hamilton by just one point in a very exciting final race of the season. He had joined Ferrari in 2006 when former world champion Michael Schumacher
decided to call it a day in F1. In 2009 when it was clear that Fernando Alonso would be making his way to Ferrari, Raikkonen knew that he would be the one making way for the 2 time world champion. The Finn then decided not to switch teams but actually changed
the sport and joined World Rally championship.
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