At the start of the year, we said Bonhams will be holding a traditional car auction during the days of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix in November, and one of the most attractive lots will be the Lotus 79 championship car, in which Mario Andretti won the title in 1978.
But this isn’t the only rarity with a glorious history up for sale there: the auction organizers recently announced that Kimi Raikkonen’s McLaren will be up for auction.
Bonhams says the car is a 2006 MP4/21 with chassis number 02 and expects the new owner to pay $2.5 to $3.5 million for it.
This was Kimi’s last season with the team from Woking, and he spent the first nine races of the 2006 championship on it, including two top three finishes: in Bahrain he took 3rd place, in Australia he came second.
It is with this car that the famous episode that took place at the Monaco Grand Prix is connected, which fans still remember with experience: after 50 laps of the race, when Kimi was second behind Fernando Alonso, McLaren with tail number 3 smoked, the engine stalled and the Finn had to get out.
After that, he did not return to the team’s pits, but simply boarded his yacht and immediately began active recreation in his own style: on TV screens, the whole world saw that Kimi was already having fun in the company of friends with a glass of beer in hand.
Incidentally, the MP4/21 was not only the last McLaren car driven by Raikkonen, but also the last McLaren built under Adrian Newey.
The auction in Abu Dhabi will be Bonhams’ first collaboration with the Paddock Club and will be broadcast live on F1TV.
Source: F1 News
I am Christopher Clyde, an experienced journalist and content writer with a passion for sports. I have been writing about Formula 1 news for the past five years and am currently employed as an author at athletistic.com, one of the top sports websites in the US.
