5 Questions F1 Fans Would Love to Ask Kimi Raikkonen

Kimi Raikkonen isn't like the rest of them.

You wouldn't catch him recording question-and-answer videos on the evening after a Formula One race, and you'd rarely find him alongside the rich and famous on the red carpet.

No, what you see with Raikkonen is exactly what you get; Kimi is, you know, just Kimi.

And he's also an incredibly talented racing driver.

Since making his F1 debut with Sauber in 2001, the Finn has driven for some of the most iconic names in the history of motorsport, including McLaren, Lotus and Ferrari, winning 20 grands prix.

Raikkonen has just one world championship to show for those 20 wins, but he should arguably have at least two more to his name having missed out on the title by small margins in 2003 and 2005.

It was thought his title-winning days were over at the end of last season when Raikkonen, the oldest driver on the grid at 35, struggled to adjust to the demands of the new V6 turbo regulations and finished outside of the top 10 in the drivers' championship for the first time in his career.

But with a competitive car at his disposal, Raikkonen has been rejuvenated in 2015 thus far, performing strongly alongside four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel and securing his first podium finish in almost two years in the previous round in Bahrain.

And ahead of this weekend's Spanish Grand Prix, an event the Iceman has won on two occasions in the past, here are five questions F1 fans would love to ask Raikkonen.

No driver likes to be viewed as a team's No. 2, especially if that driver is an established world champion.

But since returning to Ferrari at the beginning of 2014, Raikkonen has been reduced to the sidekick role alongside Fernando Alonso and, this season, Sebastian Vettel. 

Some believe that Raikkonen doesn't care for team orders, and that if the Italian outfit were to radio the Finn, asking him to move aside for (or hold position behind) his team-mate, Kimi would impolitely decline or ignore the request, continuing to run his own race.

And to some extent, it's true: Raikkonen, after all, is by far the most apolitical driver on the grid.

Yet that assumption was challenged at last year's Spanish Grand Prix, when despite outpacing Alonso for much of the weekend, Raikkonen finished behind his team-mate after Ferrari pitted the Spaniard first—disregarding the Finn's advantage in terms of track position—and switched Alonso to a favourable three-stop strategy.

After the race, Raikkonen was heard questioning Ferrari's decision-making over team radio and refused to be lured into a war of words, highlighting his unhappiness at being denied a sixth-place finish by his own employers.

Alonso's considerable performance advantage over Raikkonen in 2014 meant that was the only occasion team orders threatened to become an issue at Ferrari, but any favouritism will be magnified alongside Vettel, with whom he is closely matched, in 2015.

Vettel—as a four-time world champion, the team's marquee signing and, at 27, the symbol of Ferrari's future—is widely considered the Prancing Horse's No. 1 driver this season.

So will Kimi mind if Seb is offered preferential treatment? Does—as team principal Maurizio Arrivabene implied to ESPNF1's Laurence Edmondson following Raikkonen's return to the podium in Bahrain—the Finn perform at his best when he's written off and underestimated?

And just how would he react if the call came to pull over for Vettel?

Identifying the high points of Raikkonen's career is a relatively simple task, with his first win at Malaysia 2003, his last-lap victory at Japan 2005 and his unlikely 2007 title triumph the standout moments.

For all he has achieved, however, there is no shortage of contenders when it comes to pinpointing the biggest disappointment of his time in F1.

His two world championship near-misses in 2003, when he lost out to Michael Schumacher by just two points, and 2005, when he somehow came second to Fernando Alonso despite securing 10 poles and seven wins, must be up there.

So should his limp 2004 and 2006 campaigns, when McLaren's shortcomings prevented him from fighting back from those defeats.

The 2005 European Grand Prix, where he crashed out of the lead on the final lap, in the above video, was gut-wrenching, while a crash in the wet just two laps from the end of the 2008 Belgian GP not only cost him a win but the chance of claiming his second consecutive championship.

Being forced out of Ferrari at the end of '09, just two years on from conquering the world, was insulting and, more recently, his lacklustre 2014 campaign—including that horrifying first-lap shunt at Silverstone—must have presented a huge test of character.

Raikkonen has enjoyed almost as many moments of disappointment as success over the course of his 12 full seasons in F1, and it would be fascinating to learn how Kimi—hardly one of the grid's great philosophers—quantifies failure.

Does the Finn view it more devastating to see a race slip from his grasp just minutes from the end, or to see an entire championship campaign ultimately come to nothing? Or is it better to have fought and lost than to never have fought at all?

Raikkonen is notoriously unsociable when it comes to the "other" parts of a grand prix weekend, including post-race interviews, press conferences and promotional events. And like all great drivers, it is behind the wheel where he really does his talking.

Or to be more precise, over team radio.

The pit-to-car intercom is where Raikkonen's true personality really shines through, whether he's threatening to punch Sergio Perez, wondering why Nico Hulkenberg is getting too close for comfort or pleading for more engine power.

Radio Raikkonen has livened up many a dull race, but is Kimi himself aware of just how popular his remarks are among F1 enthusiasts?

Given that the Finn, according to BBC Sport's Andrew Benson, presented his Lotus colleagues with printed T-shirts featuring his famous "leave me alone" message in 2012, he must have some idea.

And if, as we're 90 percent convinced, Raikkonen chuckled to himself as he urged the McLarens to move aside in the Chinese Grand Prix, he's not so much an angry racing driver as he is a comedic genius.

When Fernando Alonso was announced as a Ferrari driver toward the end of 2009, Raikkonen was left in a precarious position.

With Felipe Massa, the previous year's championship runner-up, recovering from his Hungarian GP qualifying accident, the Brazilian was never going to be let go, which meant Raikkonen had to be sacrificed.

Ferrari, according to Sky Sports' James Galloway, paid the Finn a sum of £20 million to end his contract a year early, thrusting the 2007 title winner into the thick of the driver market. 

The Telegraph's Tom Cary reported in September 2009 that Raikkonen was on the verge of agreeing a return to McLaren. But two months later, the team signed newly crowned world champion Jenson Button to partner Lewis Hamilton, with Raikkonen's manager, David Robertson, telling BBC Sport's Andrew Benson how the Woking-based outfit "couldn't afford him."

With no chance of landing a competitive seat for 2010, Raikkonen was frozen out of F1 and spent the next two seasons dodging trees in the World Rally Championship and fooling around in NASCAR as his motor-racing career stalled.

If he had accepted a compromised deal with McLaren when he had the chance, however, the latter stages of his career could have played out very differently.

Raikkonen would almost certainly have been a championship contender behind the wheel of the fast and consistent MP4-25, which took McLaren to a comfortable second place in the constructors' standings in 2010. 

And who knows? He might have been in contention for a move to the dominant Red Bull outfit for 2012. As it happened, Raikkonen returned to the grid with Lotus that season, a year spent readjusting to F1 when he might have been in a position to claim a second title. 

It would be interesting to know if he regrets his self-imposed exile and whether he should, in hindsight, have put his rallying aspirations on hold until his F1 career came to an end.

Although many would hesitate to regard him as an all-time great of Formula One, Raikkonen is up there with the best of this or any generation in terms of raw, natural talent.

Blisteringly quick in his early days at McLaren, the Finnish driver has compensated for his loss of outright pace over the years by becoming the driver who snatches any opportunity that comes his way in the style of, say, Fernando Alonso.

Yet despite his successes, there will always be the nagging question surrounding just what he could have achieved across his career if he had the personality of the likes of Alonso and Michael Schumacher.

What if Kimi was the one to grab a team by the scruff of the neck, build it around him and drag it to the top?

What if he was the one spending all his spare time at the factory, in the simulator and analysing every single trace of steering, braking and throttle, to the tiniest detail?  

What if he swore allegiance to the Prancing Horse and ensured each and every member of the team was firmly on his side, pestering his colleagues for car upgrades?

Kimi's unique attitude—eating an ice cream in his casuals when his rivals are sat on the grid, heading to his boat after retiring in Monaco—is precisely why he is adored by millions, but it's also the reason why he has just the one world championship and, indeed, why he has never found a team he could truly call home.

In fact, looking back, it's almost laughable that Ferrari viewed Raikkonen as an adequate replacement for Schumacher at the end of 2006, when the two men are poles apart in terms of their approach.

So does Kimi feel he could have achieved more if he'd acted more purposefully and selfishly? Or, conversely, does he feel proud to have done things his way when the sport, by definition, encourages drivers to toe a line?

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