Formula One: Kimi Raikkonen returning to Ferrari in 2018
By Asher Fair
Scuderia Ferrari announced that they will be bringing back Kimi Raikkonen for his eighth full season with the team and 16th full season in Formula One in 2018.
Kimi Raikkonen, 37, will be returning as the full-time driver of the #7 Ferrari in the 2018 Formula One season. He is currently in his seventh full-time season with the team and 15th in the sport.
Raikkonen has had his greatest success in his Formula One career driving for Scuderia Ferrari, which is arguably the top team in the sport and traditionally has been arguably the best. He won his lone championship driving for the team 10 seasons ago back in 2007. He won six races that season, a total second to only his total of seven victories in the 2005 season when he drove for McLaren and finished in 2nd place in the championship standings.
He began driving in Formula One in the 2001 season and has driven full-time every season since then except for the 2010 and 2011 seasons, when he competed in the World Rally Championship. At one point, he proclaimed that he had “no interest in returning to Formula One.”
More from Formula One
- Formula 1: Top Red Bull threat identified for 2024
- Formula 1: Why the Max Verstappen retirement obsession?
- Formula 1: Williams ‘mistake’ hints Logan Sargeant’s future
- Formula 1 awaiting key confirmation for 2024 season
- Formula 1: The ‘championship’ Max Verstappen only leads by 3 points
Nevertheless, here he is as a confirmed driver for arguably the sport’s top team next season, which will be his sixth season since returning from the World Rally Championship. It will also be his fifth straight and eighth overall season driving for Scuderia Ferrari.
In 263 career Formula One races, Raikkonen has 20 victories. However, he has not won a race since the start of the 2013 season when he was driving for Lotus. He has driven in a total of 86 races since that most recent victory, giving him the second longest win drought among active drivers who have won at least one Formula One race before in their career (Felipe Massa – 156 races).
Raikkonen currently sits in 5th place in the championship standings and is more of team player at this point with Scuderia Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel leading the standings by a slight margin over the two hungry Mercedes drivers of Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas. Questionable calls have shown that the team’s loyalties lie with Vettel securing his fifth championship as opposed to Raikkonen’s race-by-race success and securing him his first victory in over four years.
How do you think Kimi Raikkonen will perform for Scuderia Ferrari in the 2018 season? Let us know in the comments below, and be sure to follow Beyond the Flag on both Instagram and Twitter. Finally, don’t forget to follow along with Beyond the Flag for the latest news, opinions and analysis stemming from a number of different motorsports series. You don’t want to miss any of it.