Kimi Raikkonen will not join Renault
The former world champion Kimi Raikkonen has completely denied the speculation that he is in the running for a driver in Renault for next season.
Eric Boullier revealed after the Belgian Grand Prix that the Finn driver’s management approached the team and talked to them about the fact that Kimi wanted to return to Formula 1 next year with a strong team implying that they were expecting Renault to
respond to his request. Boullier continued these talks and insisted that he would have to meet Raikkonen to confirm his interest and hopefully come up with a deal.
However, the former world champion completely denied this rumour and clearly outlined his position.
“I am very disappointed with the way they have used my name for their marketing. I have never seriously considered driving for Renault, and I can assure you 100% that I will not be driving for them next year”, Raikkonen told
Turun Sanomat.
He added that his management did not contact Renault after they first contacted them weeks ago. Boullier stated that the seat is currently still open to Vitaly Petrov for next season if he is able to impress the team sufficiently at the final four races
remaining in this season.
Renault is expected to be considering the Chinese driver Ho-Pin Tung, ex Renault driver Romain Grosjean and the GP2 driver Jerome d’Ambrosio who is the current Friday tester. Nick Heidfeld and Adrian Sutil were also linked to the seat but both of these drivers
have not spoken about these rumours publically.
Renault has been quite unprofessional about issuing statements regarding their fresh signing for 2011 recently. The team is obviously not happy with how Vitaly Petrov has been performing as compared to Robert Kubica and it is expected that Robert might leave
the team as well. If Kubica leaves the team, Renault will have to face even more problems and this statement by the Finn will affect their signing for the next season drastically. Renault was one of the top running teams a couple of years ago but as the team
has not been able to perform up to the mark since the past 2 years especially after the two-time champion Fernando Alonso’s departure.
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