This was the race that featured that Alonso move on Schumacher around the outside of the fearsome 130R corner – but Raikkonen also pulled off a superb move of his own on the German master, going around the outside of the Ferrari into Turn 1 on a day when F1’s young guns showed they were not cowed by anyone’s reputation. WATCH: Hill’s wet-weather heroics and 9 other classic Suzuka memories
If the 2004 Belgian Grand Prix was notable for its prangs and mishaps on track, the 2005 Japanese Grand Prix was thrillingly entertaining in an entirely different way: the finest drivers in the world at the absolute top of their game, racing for all their worth around one of the world’s best race tracks. With Alonso third and Hamilton only seventh, the crown was Kimi’s.
Meanwhile Raikkonen was running behind Interlagos-specialist Felipe Massa in the other Ferrari, until the final stops, when a series of quick laps saw him emerge ahead of the Brazilian into a lead he would carry to the flag. It then got much worse for Hamilton when a gearbox problem dropped him down to 18th position.
The Finn, starting third, passed Hamilton in P2 before Turn 1, while the Briton then went off track trying regain another position lost to Alonso. READ MORE: Six of the best F1 title turnarounds Raikkonen was three points behind Alonso and seven behind Hamilton – and was very much the outsider for the title. Remarkably, Hamilton was leading the championship over reigning double world champion Alonso as the circus gathered at Interlagos, Brazil for the final race of the season. Instead, all the focus was on McLaren pair Hamilton and Alonso, who had fought a bitter battle for the title in Hamilton’s rookie F1 season. Going into the 2007 title decider, few people were talking about Kimi Raikkonen – which was presumably fine by him. He was off the mark – and though it was to be his only win of the season, a run of eight more podiums meant he missed out on the World Championship title by just two points. Starting sixth, he benefited from problems for Michael Schumacher and David Coulthard who started ahead of him, but out-raced Rubens Barrichello and Fernando Alonso to take a dominant maiden win by a margin of almost 40 seconds. ORAL HISTORY: The inside story of Kimi Raikkonen's legendary first F1 testīut come 2003, Adrian Newey had worked his magic again and after a maiden podium at the first race of the season in Australia, Raikkonen took his first victory at the following race in Malaysia. They were big shoes to fill, and unfortunately for Raikkonen, his first year at McLaren was a Ferrari-fest, with the Scuderia winning all but two races in 2002. Raikkonen’s debut season in F1 was so impressive that all worries about his inexperience soon evaporated – so much so that Ron Dennis hand-picked the then-21-year-old to replace Mika Hakkinen, who was stepping down for a sabbatical year that eventually became retirement. So as he prepares for his record-breaking 323rd F1 race start next weekend in the Eifel Grand Prix, we decided it was high time to pick out the very best of his victories – and just for fun we've decided to rank them in order of greatness… 10.
The famously media-shy Finn put a stop to such talk with a points finish on his debut in Australia, and since then he’s racked up 21 wins, 18 pole positions and of course, a world championship title. READ MORE: Barrichello congratulates Raikkonen for tying his F1 starts record
Raikkonen had driven in just 23 races in his entire career before he was snapped up by Peter Sauber – and there was plenty of chatter at the time about whether such an inexperienced driver had any business competing in the top tier of world motorsport. It is somewhat ironic that Kimi Raikkonen has taken the record for the most Formula 1 race starts in history, given that the Finn had completed perhaps the fewest single seater races of any driver to graduate to F1 in the modern era, when he joined the grid in 2001. Last year Raikkonen broke Rubens Barrichello's record for F1 race starts, and in the piece below – first published ahead of the Eifel Grand Prix at the Nurburgring last October – we took a look at his best ever wins. Kimi Raikkonen announced on Wednesday that this season would be his last in Formula 1 after a remarkable career spanning two decades.