Since it was announced in December 2009 that Kimi Raikkonen had signed a contract with Red Bull to drive for the Citroen Junior Team in 2010, the Finn’s day job has been the World Rally Championship (WRC). Raikkonen had already taken part in a handful of mostly minor rally events the previous year with a Fiat Grande Punto S2000 and now he had jumped into the highest level of rallying driving a Citroen C4 WRC, a monster compared with the group N car he had used previously.

However, he decided to accept the challenge and compete with the best specialists in the world: rally drivers who had years and years of experience with WRC cars, with the different surfaces and conditions they face during the rallies and, above all, with pacenotes. Rallying is more about driving with your ears than with your eyes, usually a challenging adjustment for circuit drivers. Nevertheless, Raikkonen was not alone in this adventure. His co-driver was the experienced Kaj Lindstrom, who used to co-drive four-time world champion Tommi Makinen.

2010 was a year full of contrasts, highs and lows as well as new experiences for the Finn. He won his first special stage in the WRC, he had his highest ever finish of 5th in Turkey and his pace on clean tarmac was brilliant. But he was also off the pace on slippery surfaces and crashed several times, something typical for drivers of his little experience, but that made big headlines. Probably, the worst moment in the season happened during the shakedown of RACC Rally de España, when Raikkonen rolled and damaged the roll cage of his car. He could not even start the rally. Raikkonen was not the first driver, nor will he be the last one, to crash during shakedown; rallying is a tricky sport where mistakes are costly given that there are no run-off areas, only trees and ditches. The Finn learned it the hard way, though.