2012: the return to F1 of ‘Iceman’
At the end of the 2009 season, two years after winning his first and only world title in F1, Kimi Räikkönen decided to retire from the Circus, opening a chapter of his career in the WRC. In 2012, however, the last world champion in Ferrari’s history chose to return to F1 for his second stint, reaching an agreement with Lotus. Yet, before signing with the English team, several teams tried to open negotiations with the Finn, starting with Force India.
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Szafnauer’s attempt
Coming off a good season, it was especially Otmar Szafnauer, then engaged in a managerial role aimed at improving the team’s performance, who approached Räikkönen. In an interview on the High Performance Racing podcast, the Romanian-American engineer recalled how close he really was to signing Räikkönen, who then chose to join the Lotus project: “I almost signed Kimi Räikkönen at Force India before he went to Lotus – he admitted – he was in Brazil, I don’t remember the year, before the last race. I was supposed to meet Kimi at the Hyatt Morumbi, where we were all staying. I met him with two of his friends, trying to convince him to come to Force India. He told me: ‘Okay, at the end of the season, come talk to me’. His two friends, I believe, were the founders of Angry Birds, the video game. Räikkönen says: ‘Let’s talk at the Red Bull party’. Red Bull was organizing a big end-of-season party. We arrive and I think: ‘We won’t get in, there’s a huge crowd’. We couldn’t get in, but they recognized Kimi. So they said: ‘Kimi, this way’ and opened all the doors they had. Kimi waited for us to get in before crossing the threshold.”
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The admission
For the 2012 season, in the end, Szafnauer confirmed Paul Di Resta and promoted Nico Hülkenberg from the test driver role, but in hindsight he admitted that the team did not have sufficient performance to sign a world champion like ‘Iceman’: “I couldn’t convince him – he concluded – it was a combination of factors. You also have to convince drivers that the future looks brighter compared to other offers they have received. To be fair, he went to Lotus at a time when they were winning more races than us. They were stronger at that time, and they still had James Allison.”
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