With the championship won, the consolidation begins. Can Kimi build on his six 2007 wins and carve out his own career-defining Ferrari era?

BY PETER WINDSOR

A couple of years ago I felt a tap on my shoulder at an end-of-year party; it was Kimi, slightly unsteady after a long day at the race track, wanting to talk about life and racing and what-it-was-all-about. We chatted for a while about snowmobiling and rallying and British F3 and Euro F3, but then Kimi stared into the middle distance and said something that shocked me: "You know, I only want to win one championship. I hate F1. I love the driving but I hate everything else. I just want to win the championship and then get out. Do something else..."

That was in the McLaren days, I should point out - and I should also suggest that I think Kimi today is a very different man. I think he loves driving for Ferrari (where relatively few sponsorship demands are placed on his shoulders, and where he can be very much his own man) - and I think that he's therefore able to change and evolve and live beyond his own stereotype. And that isn't just because he has now won the championship, or because he's that little bit older: it's because Kimi has never been anything other than completely honest with himself and with others.

He doesn't have to 'be' anybody - in the way that Ralf Schumacher has to 'be' the kid who could make it without Michael, or Fernando Alonso is the maltreated double world champion. Kimi, at his most complicated, is just Kimi.

And what he likes about Ferrari, I think, is this: if he wants to drive a Skoda in the Arctic Rally, or dress up in a gorilla suit, or fly to New York for the weekend, then Luca Montezemolo or Stefano Domenicali, Luca's new lieutenant, won't stop him. They're going to let Kimi be Kimi; to do anything else would be to dilute his magic.

The party incident shows, nonetheless, the way Kimi's mind works. He isn't ambitious in the Michael-sense. He's just a simple, gifted guy who wants to race the best car available and after that to have fun. And if he can't have fun then he'll do something else. The question, then, for 2008 is: what can we expect of Kimi? And, as an adjunct, how good can he be over the long-term?