As the speculation increases about who will replace Mark Webber at Red Bull next season, former champion Kimi Raikkonen remains unsure if he will stay at Lotus.

Webber announced last month that he is quitting Formula One at the end of the season to race sports cars for German manufacturer Porsche, and there has been a guessing game since over which driver Red Bull will pick to compete alongside three-time defending champion Sebastian Vettel.

The 33-year-old Raikkonen is one of the favorites, and the 2007 F1 champion has yet to commit his future to Lotus.

"There's not really one (factor). It's going to be the overall package and whatever feels right for me," he said Thursday ahead of this weekend's Hungarian Grand Prix. "Whatever decision it will be might feel stupid for somebody else but it might just feel right for me. I have no idea what will happen, we will have to wait and see."

Australian driver Daniel Ricciardo and Jean-Eric Vergne of France both race for Toro Rosso - Red Bull's sister team - and are reportedly among the contenders.

Raikkonen's decision with Lotus may hinge on how competitive he thinks the team is going to be next season, when car changes will impact the sport.

"It's a combination of things, it has to be right on racing, outside of racing, basically everything just has to feel right," he said. "There is no guarantee the choice will be the good one in the long run ... You live with the choices."

The 2014 regulations will set the sport's engineers the challenge of completing a 300-kilometer race distance on a fuel load of just 100 kg. To do so, teams will switch from naturally aspirated 2.4-liter V8 engines to 1.6-liter V6 turbocharged hybrid Power Units.

"Obviously you can't have any guarantee what will happen next year with any teams and any cars," Raikkonen said. "One engine manufacturer gets it right. (So) it might be a long season for some teams and an easy one for others."

Raikkonen is one of the most reclusive, softly-spoken drivers in F1.

He was asked how he would cope with the extra media demands should he join the most powerful team in F1 - and the Finn answered that question as coolly and dispassionately as he does most others.

"I've been in most of the top teams and I know exactly how it goes," he said.

Whatever team Raikkonen chooses, Lewis Hamilton - who succeeded him as F1 champion - expects the same challenge.

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Kimi Raikkonen's Australian Grand Prix victory announced Lotus as a championship contender this year.
The team then slipped back in Malaysia, finishing only sixth and seventh, with Grosjean ahead.
Lotus remains second in the constructors' championship, 26 points behind Red Bull, while Raikkonen is Sebastian Vettel's nearest rival in the drivers' table, nine points adrift.
Asked if he was confident Lotus could stay in the title hunt, Grosjean said he was confident in the team's capabilities but unsure about its resources.
"It depends on the money that we have. That is the key in F1," he said.
"We know we have good people, we know they are able to do a race winning car, we know that on development and on factory tools we are there.

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LOTUS have brushed aside their malaise in Malaysia by predicting Kimi Raikkonen will win again.
The Iceman could only finish seventh in Sepang just a week after scooping a shock victory in Australia.

Cynics immediately muttered that Raikkonen’s Melbourne triumph could be a one-hit wonder thanks to his car’s freakish lack of tyre wear.

But Lotus chief Eric Boullier begged to differ.

He said that after making a poor start in Malaysia, the pace of Raikkonen and team-mate Romain Grosjean, who finished sixth, was “not bad”.

He added: “We were there, so our level of confidence going into the next two races is much, much higher.

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Kimi Raikkonen's victory in the season-opening Australian Grand Prix has made the Lotus team eager to secure his services beyond the end of the year.

The Finn came from seventh on the grid to win in Melbourne, making a two-stop strategy work in his favour, and team owner Gerard Lopez admits that he is keen to ensure that the 2007 world champion is racing in black-and-gold next season. However, the Genii Capital CEO also admits that timing talks with his team leader might be key to their success.

“We have a very easy relationship with Kimi,” Lopez told Finland's Turun Sanomat newspaper, “At the moment, everything is perfect so, of course, we will discuss how to proceed. I don't think it's so much about negotiations, but how we decide to continue the adventure together.”

There was a time during last season, however, when Raikkonen's presence in 2013 was in doubt. Despite being in the first year of his return from rallying, the Finn refused to be drawn on whether he would stick around for another campaign, although his performance – including victory in the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix – ultimately triggered clauses in his contract, as well as providing a useful financial bonus as his 207 points reportedly earned him millions of dollars over and above his retainer.

Ironically, Lopez admitted towards the end of last season that the 'unexpected' extra payment had caused a problem for the team, and a minor rift with his driver when it was delayed, but insists that all is well between them now.

“These points are good for both sides – team and driver,” he claimed in Malaysia, “We are living in exciting times. We knew before the first race that we are better than last season, but we didn't know exactly what the others had done over the winter. We talk about tyres [after Australia], but Kimi's performance was brilliant.”

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RAIKKONEN AND LOTUS: TRUE TITLE HOPEFULS?

Was the Australian Grand Prix a one-off, or are Kimi Raikkonen and the Lotus E21 credible world championship contenders? That's the question that this weekend's Malaysian Grand Prix will go some way towards answering.

In the final reckoning, Raikkonen's victory was relatively straightforward, although perhaps not quite as simple as the man himself suggested after the race. But that doesn't mean that it will be the same again in Malaysia.

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Lotus team owner Gerard Lopez has left the door open for a new deal with current championship leader Kimi Raikkonen.
Finn Raikkonen, who became the first winner of the 2013 season in Australia last weekend, is not saying if he wants to extend his contract beyond the end of the year.
"Let's wait and see," the famously phlegmatic 33-year-old said.
Luxembourger Lopez admitted he will stage talks with Raikkonen - who according to many is fitter and happier at Lotus than ever before in his F1 career - when the time is right.
"We have a very easy relationship with Kimi," Lopez told Turun Sanomat newspaper.
"At the moment everything is perfect, so of course we will discuss how to proceed.
"I don't think it's so much about negotiations, but how we decide to continue the adventure together," he added.
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Lotus Team Principal Eric Boullier says he is confident that Kimi Raikkonen and Roman Grosjean will make strong starts to 2013.
With Raikkonen returning to the sport after four years out and Grosjean starting his first full F1 campaign, both had fairly mediocre beginnings to 2012, especially the Frenchman, who was forced to retire in each of the first two races.

They slowly but surely improved though and as the team continued to develop its car, the drivers' results only got better.

Now after another winter of testing, Bouiller is confident his charges will challenging for the title and is expecting a fast start to next year.

"I would be very happy to start the season with the same car performance we had last year relative to everyone else," Boullier told Autosport. "I know both our drivers will be race fit and, let's say, delivering more than 12 months ago."

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