MP4-21 (Photo credit: dawvon)
The current F1 season is turning out to be one of the best in recent memory. For once we have not one or two but four title contenders. A far cry from the days of the Schumacher and Ferrari domination days, or even from the days when Schumacher and Mika had their famous rivalry going. I won’t go beyond that since that is beyond my time.
But one man will be wondering where things went wrong, and horribly wrong at that – Kimi Räikkönen.
He was chosen by none other than Mika as his successor at McLaren. Five years at McLaren and no World Championship to show for it, although he did come pretty close in 2005. A look at his profile on www.f1.com tells us that he had reliability issues in 2004, 2005 and 2006. The F1 world waited to see him crowned champion.
The move to Ferrari was supposed to help him get his hands on that elusive trophy. But he suddenly finds himself getting to the point where Ferrari might have to choose to throw their might behind the title aspirations of Fillipe Massa and not Kimi Räikkönen.
Strangely the headlines now read, “Ferrari to address reliability issues”.
It is time we all faced the truth, a man who does not finish 33.7% of the races he starts will not and cannot become world champion. Even if he were to win the two out of three races that he finishes, he would average less than 7 points a race. But winning every race you finish is a dream that few can think of.
One look at Alonso DNF percentage shows you the difference. Alonso gets a DNF in 17.8% of the races he starts.
So maybe it wasn’t the McLaren that was at fault but Kimi who was breaking the car by not driving to finish. Today he is doing it to the Ferrari.
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