Kimi Raikkonen: In NASCAR, everyone has a chance to succeed

This weekend Kimi Raikkonen will start the NASCAR race at the Watkins Glen road circuit in Trackhouse Racing’s #91 Chevrolet Camaro.

Since he does not have much experience in driving vehicles of this type, and even that dates back to 2011, the Finnish racer initially modestly stated that he did not face any specific sports duties, but after the first tests that took place last week, he changed slightly the tone of his comments.

NASCAR teams just moved to a new generation of cars this year, and Kimi says all drivers have about the same chance of success in these conditions.

“I think in this series everyone has an equal chance of winning the race at any given time, which is great,” he told the Associated Press. – Talking to other people about the new car made me realize that everyone has roughly equal opportunities. All teams are still in the study phase of a new car.

Justin Marks, co-owner of Trackhouse Racing, was very honest from the start and bluntly said no one is promising me early success. All we can do is do our best and hope for a good result.

Whatever race category you take, you can never predict how events will develop. So I trusted what Justin told me because his team is doing very well. Anything can happen in NASCAR.”

Räikkönen will not be the only European motorsport driver in Sunday’s race: Daniil Kvyat, former F1 driver for Toro Rosso/AlphaTauri and Red Bull Racing, and Mike Rockenfeller, 24 Hours of Le Mana winner and former DTM champion.

The Russian driver drives the Toyota No. 26 of the new Team Hezeberg team and the veteran German drives the Chevrolet No. 77 for Spire Motorsports.

On Saturday at noon in Watkins Glen (in Moscow it is currently 7:00 pm), practice starts, for which NASCAR has only 20 minutes, and the qualifying races start in an hour.