Before you get too excited about the idea of Kimi Raikkonen’s heading back to Ferrari (and giving new life to my Kimi Ferrari hat!), a few doses of cold water.
First, what I’m seeing suggests that Luca di Montezemolo — who apparently was the one most responsible for kicking Kimi to the curb in order to make room for Fernando Alonso — is still pretty down on the Finn. And Kimi? Reports are that he still says he’d never work with Luca again.
We all know how hard and fast the word “never” is in Formula 1, though. But still… if there’s a driver who would stoke a grudge, not to mention not want to do all the Ferrari extra-curricular stuff, it’s Kimi. Because he’s been there, done that, won his F1 title, thank you very much.
There’s also this from Lotus team principal Eric Boullier: “It is nice that Ferrari is in the newspapers, but I don’t know that Kimi has plans to go back to Ferrari.”
Boullier, according to Autosport, is expecting his line-up to be the same next year. “Definitely. There is no reason for them to leave.”
At the same time, Ferrari isn’t ruling anything out, even as the team tries to keep boosting up Felipe Massa in order to win the constructor title this season. It feels to me like an increasingly rough balancing act. Ferrari now has a month to work on it and see how strongly the team — emphasis on the team — can finish this season.
