Egmont Sippel
Jost Capito has been director of Ford Team RS since moving from Sauber F1 in October 2001. He told me a story once, as we sped along in a Focus ST.
"One of my jobs at Sauber was to watch the driver's market," Joss said.
"I closely followed the junior formulae, and there was this one guy who basically won everything he ever entered for: 21 out of 23 Formula Renault races.
'Then I discovered that he had won a fairly wet karting race on slicks, because he didn't have the money to buy grooved tyres.
"So we flew Kimi out to Hinwil. At the end of the day, Peter Sauber offered to show Kimi the facilities. He wasn't interested. He only wanted to drive the car.
"It was off to Mugello, then, for a test. Within five laps Kimi was as fast as Pedro Diniz, our official tester. Diniz wasn't the quickest guy in F1. But he knew the car and the track and the team.
"Kimi came in and asked for some new wing and suspension settings. He went out and was a second faster than Diniz had ever been.
"That was after only 23 car races in his life, ever. And in three days of testing, he didn't make a single major mistake.
"Peter signed him straight away."
In the points, on debut
Thus it came about that Kimi-Matias Raikkonen drove for Sauber in 2001. The first three races were on probation, so to speak, pending a FIA super license, as everybody had a lot to say about a kid graduating in the blink of an eye from 180 kW , to more than 900 kW.
After only 23 car races. Ever.
How would he handle it, especially in the heat of battle?
By finishing 6th on debut, that's how. Kimi Raikkonen had arrived in a massive way. Talk about him being snapped up by Ferrari started on the very same day.
In the Mail&Guardian, I wrote at the time that Ferrari nearly had a perfect weekend in Oz. The imperfection, however, was not that Maranello had failed to secure a 1-2, managing only a 1-3 instead.
No. Having been mesmerized by the Kimster all weekend long, I was of the opinion - printed in black and white at the time - that the weekend was a failure for any team who had not secured Raikkonen's signature by Sunday night, March 4, 2001.
Schumacher's retirement
In the following weeks and months rumours about Ferrari chasing the Ice Man abounded. Yet Michael Schumacher would have none of it. Barrichello was a safe bet as a puppy dog No.2.
And so it would stay, until Luca Montezemolo decreed, in 2005, that Raikkonen would drive a Ferrari, come what may, in 2007.
That was, incidentally, after the Kimster had trounced Schumacher's superior Ferrari, in an all-time classic exhibition of speed and skill, at Spa, in 2004.
Again Schumacher rebelled against the Raikkonen threat, as so meticulously detailed in Tom Rubython's excellent story in BusinessF1, in May this year.
Titled "Michael Schumacher - The Strange Story of his Retirement" (http://www.f1i.com/content/view/6909/1/class=elevenred), Rubython had, amongst other interesting snippets and insights, the following to say:
"Montezemolo had long before given Schumacher a deadline of Monza and told him (expressly against Jean Todt's wishes) that it was either driving alongside Kimi Räikkönen in 2007 - or retirement."
And a bit later on:
"Officially, of course, none of the above occurred. The official line was that Schumacher had simply decided to retire many months before and that Ferrari had signed Räikkönen to take his place, end of story. In fact, Todt suggested anyone who thought any different was 'stupid'.
"Everyone, then, is stupid."
Stupidest of all, though, was Schumacher himself, although he had no way of knowing it at the time.
Tyre and TC woes
Given the severe limits on 2007 testing, however, and hence the time it took Raikkonen to adapt to the team, car, tyres and most of all Ferrari's extreme traction control (TC) system, it is logical to assume that Schumacher - with his vast knowledge and experience of Maranello and Bridgestone - would have wiped the floor with Kimi during the latter's transitional early season phase.
And we all know what would have happened then, for the rest of 2007.
Yet, who was to know that the switch to Bridgestone would ask for so much to be unlearned and relearned by drivers like Raikkonen, Alonso, Kubica, etc?
Who was to know how much Raikkonen's purist style of maximising straight lines through corners would be restricted by Maranello's severe brand of TC?
And who was to know how much Kimi would be apprehended by a slow-turning nose born of a long-wheelbased car - the latter as a result of the team's 2005 experience with very similar Bridgestone tyre constructions and compounds?
Remember, for instance, how the Ferraris destroyed their rears in Canada of that year, as just one example of a season-long affliction?
Long wheelbase, zero keel
Well, not this time around. At 313.5 cm, the F2007's wheelbase was comfortably the longest in F1.
Moving the front wheels forward made it tricky to get the weight balance right, as ballast basically stops at a F1 car's keel. Torsional rigidity is also more difficult to achieve in a long nose.
On top of it, Ferrari opted for a zero keel design.
All season long, then, the F2007 outperformed the rest in terms of tyre durability. But the downside was a slow and numb nose, a zero keel and a long wheelbase never having been quick on darty circuits, like Monaco or the Hungaroring.
And through the apex lots and lots of Schumacher-shaped TC hampered Kimi's speed no end.
The car also lost a lot of top end once the floor had been aligned with stipulated non-flexibility regulations after Oz 2007.
And then a belt in the wind tunnel apparently broke, putting this crucial developmental tool out of commission for a long time, in F1 terms, straight after Ferrari's dominant display in Spain.
Monaco's single point
By May, the situation was so bad that Rory Byrne, no less, confessed to an urgent need to sharpen up the F2007's nose if Kimi had to have any hope of overhauling a deficit which had ballooned to 26 points, after Indianapolis.
Point is: who would have thought all of this?
Nobody. Not even Michael Schumacher.
So, he retired and left the door open for Kimi to manage two things that he himself never could: win on debut for Maranello, and win the world title in his first season with Ferrari.
By a hair's width, admittedly. And how important that single point in Monaco turned out to be!
The real turning point, however, came in the USA, where Kimi and engineer Chris Dyer at last got to grips with traction control and front suspension settings. The race yielded a fastest lap and from France onwards the Kimster was virtually unstoppable, except when his beguilingly smooth and rapid progress was impeded by technical woes.
His courageous drive in Japan, scything through from stone last one-third of the distance into the race, to a podium at the end, stand as a monument to supreme skill, car control and an ability to improvise; Raikkonen used unique lines that even Alonso failed to pick out.
On days like that, the latest super-Finn can drive as well and as quickly as virtually anybody in the history of the game.
Natural speed
The difference is the ease with which speed comes to him. In the off-season, Raikkonen happened to turn up at a snow-mobile race, introduced himself as James Hunt (to side-step contractual dos and don'ts) and proceeded to win, going away - against seasoned top professionals.
"In his second race for Sauber," Jost Capito tells, "team boss Peter organised for Kimi and Nick Heidfeld to drive around Sepang in a road car for an hour, on the day before practice started.
"Kimi drove three laps, came in and left for his hotel. He knew the circuit, he said; there was no point in circulating for another 50 minutes, as Heidfeld did.
"Next morning, out of the box, Kimi was half a second quicker than Nick."
Natural talent?
Oh yeah, the boy can drive. He got the action, he got the motion/yeah, the boy is quick..., as we paraphrased Dire Straits in our opening column, earlier this year.
Now for 2008. And yes, the front of the car will be different, according to Aldo Costa: the side-pods, the monocoque, the wing...
Kimi's already won with a numb nose.
Now, hopefully with a sharper turn-in and no TC at all playing straight into his champion's hands, the game seems to be over before it has begun.
But be careful: that's the way it seemed to be 12 months ago as well...