Kimi Raikkonen Gets Ready for a NASCAR Race

For the past nine years Kimi Raikkonen has raced in Formula 1 with the number 7, but in August he has to temporarily switch to another racing category and drive the car with the number 91.

At the end of May, we talked about the Finnish racer’s plans to try NASCAR again: on August 21, Kimi will start the NASCAR Cup stage at Watkins Glen, and yesterday in Helsinki he held a special press conference dedicated to this project.

Raikkonen will drive the Chevrolet Camaro for Trackhouse Racing, which Justin Marks created last year from his acquired Leavine Family Racing properties. Kimi got his first experience playing NASCAR in 2011, and while he liked everything then, that story didn’t develop. But it’s not too late to fix it.

“After that experience, I always said I had a lot of fun. The NASCAR series is more like old school racing,” Kimi told the Finnish press yesterday. – The approach to organizing competitions there is different, not comparable to what is practiced in other motorsport championships.

NASCAR has a rather relaxed style and the cars are now more like GT vehicles. They used to be well designed, but now they have very normal gearboxes.

Justin Marks is a very business man and he flew to Europe especially to visit my house. We agreed on everything and he was ready to answer all my questions right away.

By the way, Marx offered Raikkonen to drive car No. 91 in the spring, during the NASCAR stage in Austin, because Kimi’s Texas track is well known in Formula 1, and there he took his last win, winning in 2018. the American Grand Prix.

But Kimi refused, and now he explained it this way: “Then it wasn’t the right time for this. However, when that race was held in Austin, I watched it on TV with great interest. After we sign the contract, I regularly watch the highlights of the NASCAR races and Justin and I are in constant contact.

In general, a lot of accidents happen there and it often happens that cars can be sent to a dump immediately after racing, so you should try to avoid problems. On oval tracks, the real battle starts in the final laps – let’s see what it will be like on a road-like track.

The idea is to keep the car in relatively good shape until the end of the race and see if I can keep up with the others. But for me there is no task to show any result.

In general, Trackhouse Racing doesn’t mind if I do two or three races this year, but in the end we came to an agreement. But I have no doubt that this story can be continued. Time will tell. If I get a reasonable offer, I’m definitely interested.”