After skipping Rally New Zealand due to the high costs associated to rally Down Under, the next event in Raikkonen’s schedule was the Vodafone Rally de Portugal, another gravel rally. It became the 3rd event in a row that the Finn finished a WRC rally in the points. He finished 10th, 11 minutes 34.3 seconds behind his teammate Sebastien Ogier. He made a few mistakes that cost him some time and his overall pace was 1.81 seconds per kilometre slower than Ogier.

Before facing the first tarmac rally of the WRC season, Raikkonen and Sebastien Ogier took part in the Rally della Lanterna, a rally that is part of Italian Tarmac Rallying Championship. This was the Finn’s first podium in his short rallying career. He finished the rally in second position, just 5.7 seconds behind Ogier in what was his first experience ever with tarmac in a Citroen C4.

The next rally of the championship was the only one where Raikkonen had some previous experience: the Neste Oil Rally Finland. In 2009, he took part in the event with his Fiat Punto Grande S2000 prepared by Tommi Makinen. He was 3rd in his class when he rolled out of the rally in SS19. His effort in 2010 went only slightly better. The Finn went off into a ditch in SS12 and lost a lot of time, but at least, in this occasion, he could drive his home event to the finish line, even if he finished in 25th position, 23 minutes 15.3 seconds behind his fellow Finn Jari-Matti Latvala, who won the rally. In the fast gravel stages of Finald, Raikkonen reduced his difference in pace to the rally winner to 1.38 seconds per kilometre, confirming his progressive improvement on gravel.Next, he went to Rally Bulgaria, another new rally on the WRC calendar. A few things became clear during this rally: Raikkonen is much faster on tarmac than gravel – he was only 0.54 seconds per kilometre off the pace, and in some splits he even was the fastest of all drivers – he crashes easily in slow tight corners and he has the tendency to crash out on his side of the road. Up to this point the Iceman seemed to be able to evaluate braking points in the high-speed passages very well, but not so well in slow turns where he tended to go off the road. Some experts think his tendency to get off the road when he makes a mistake arises because the Finn only steps once on the brakes when approaching a corner, a much more time-effective way of braking but much more risky: if he brakes too late, he is automatically off the road. Some of the experts also think he can evaluate the braking points at high speed better because of his past in Formula 1. His tendency to crash out road on the left side of the road is a curious one; a common joke in the rallying world is that you better crash on your co-driver side of the car since, well, he is just the co-driver. Raikkonen seems to prefer taking risks when he is the one who might get the hit, though. And this is what happened in a hairpin in SS4, Raikkonen was a few kph too fast in a very slow right turn and, very slowly, rolled off the road. It was a minor accident given that it happened at very low speed, but the car ended up upside down in a deep ditch covered by vegetation and the automatic alarm system went off, making the organizers stop the stage immediately and send an ambulance to the accident point, just to find the driver, without a scratch, merely standing on the floor of his car. Raikkonen re-entered the rally the next day, with 10 minutes superrallying penalties and ended the event in 11th, 14 minutes and 6.4 seconds behind Loeb.