Why Ferrari persists with 'laggard' Raikkonen

Ferrari's decision to extend Kimi Raikkonen's grand prix career for another year will divide opinion in Formula 1. Raikkonen's legion of loyal fans will delight in the knowledge that arguably the most naturally gifted driver of his generation will remain in F1 for a 16th season. Raikkonen's many critics will argue this is yet another season too far for an underperforming star who should have long ago made way for fresher blood.

Ferrari's decision is unimaginative and conservative, certainly. A strong case can be made to say it is absolutely the wrong move.

Since Raikkonen returned to Ferrari in 2014 he has been destroyed by Fernando Alonso and subjugated by Sebastian Vettel. Raikkonen is without a victory in 70 starts since he rejoined the Scuderia, and has often been the subject of public criticism from the team's management for abject performances. This season, twice, Ferrari president Sergio Marchionne has questioned Raikkonen's ability to properly harness his abilities to the Maranello cause.

But there is method behind Ferrari's apparent madness in retaining Raikkonen for 2018; good reasons why it persists with such an enigmatic talent.

For starters, there is a dearth of suitable alternatives immediately ready and available. Lewis Hamilton is tied to Mercedes for at least another season; his new team-mate Valtteri Bottas is likely to remain on board after an outstanding campaign so far. Even if Ferrari wanted to poach drivers from its major rival, they wouldn't come easy or cheap.

Red Bull's outstanding pair is also off limits - Daniel Ricciardo is under contract for at least one more year, team-mate Max Verstappen for another two. Outside the top three teams, the only proven champion is Alonso, and there is little chance he would return under the same management that oversaw his departure at the end of 2014.

Of the best performing midfielders, who is readily available and indisputably capable of doing a better job? Carlos Sainz Jr is under contract with Red Bull; Nico Hulkenberg is signed to a multi-year agreement with Renault. The rest are all questionable candidates.

Former Lotus personnel will tell you Romain Grosjean was quicker than Raikkonen through 2012-13, but a less complete driver. He remains blindingly fast on his day, but inconsistent - and is now being given a serious run by McLaren reject Kevin Magnussen at Haas, which will negate Grosjean's value in a world where perception counts for so much.

Sergio Perez is suffering similar trouble at Force India. Having rebuilt himself from McLaren reject into a quick and reliable points scorer, and occasional podium finisher, he now finds himself under serious and increasing pressure from Mercedes junior Esteban Ocon.

Raikkonen is often portrayed as a lazy driver. It's rather that he sees clear delineation in responsibilities and wants to trust those around him to do their jobs properly without interference

Ferrari has its own junior candidates in the mix. Third driver Antonio Giovinazzi made an impressive cameo for Sauber in Melbourne, but subsequent crash-happiness may have dented his stock. Meanwhile, Charles Leclerc is dominating an F2 grid of questionable depth as a rookie, but nevertheless is (deservedly) hotly tipped to graduate to F1 because of Sauber's renewed engine deal with Ferrari for 2018.

It makes perfect sense for Ferrari to blood one or both of its promising youngsters in what Marchionne hopes will become its junior team while Raikkonen keeps the big seat warm. If Leclerc proves to be the superstar everyone thinks he is, then we can expect 2018 to be Raikkonen's last in his second Ferrari career. If not, and Giovinazzi is not worth a shot either, well, then who knows?

But keeping half an eye on the future does not explain everything. What about all those underwhelming Raikkonen races and lack of points - surely they undermine his suitability for retention?

Sport is always about more than pure numbers. Raikkonen's returns are disappointing by any measure, so there must be other, less tangible and obvious, reasons why Ferrari's bigwigs feel Raikkonen still has something to offer F1's grandest team as he approaches his 38th birthday.

For a special feature in Autosport magazine, published this week, I spent a proportion of the past two years interviewing key drivers and team personnel that have worked with Raikkonen, and I also spoke at length to the man himself (in a 50-minute interview conducted before news of his contract renewal broke), to try to understand the enigma of a driver who remains gainfully employed at the very top of Formula 1 despite being such a statistical underachiever. Through this, I discovered some of the added qualities that make him such a valuable asset.

Raikkonen is often portrayed as a lazy driver - someone who simply relies on his natural feel for the car but isn't particularly interested in doing anything other than driving. But his former race engineer Mark Slade, who worked with Raikkonen at McLaren and Lotus, argues that's a misunderstanding of Raikkonen's approach.

It's not that Raikkonen is uninterested; rather that he sees clear delineation in responsibilities within teams, and wants to trust those around him to do their jobs properly without interference.

Once trust is established, he is "entirely enjoyable to work with" because things are "logical and straightforward". Plus, Raikkonen's extraordinary feel for the car means his technical feedback on its deficiencies is exceptionally concise, and nearly always accurate.

"One of the biggest difficulties with drivers who are less consistent with their approach is trying to filter out this inconsistency," Slade explains. "It becomes very difficult very quickly. If he came in saying there's something wrong with the car, the chances are there's something wrong with the car, even if you can't see that in the data - 99% of the time he's right.

"When we were doing Michelin tyre testing, they desperately wanted him to do the testing. They told us at one point he was the best test driver they worked with. They used to give a little array of tick-boxes for different characteristics of the tyre - what the tyres were doing, what the characteristics of the different compounds were. They said there were some drivers who got most of the points correct, but he always got them all correct.

"And his consistency of lap time when we tested eight different compounds - his baselines would be within one tenth, and that meant that they could properly analyse the lap time data as well as the driver's comments."

Slade says he's never seen anything else like Raikkonen's "extraordinary level of sensitivity" to the car, to the point where Raikkonen could detect problems with McLaren's traction-control software that the engineers couldn't see in their trackside data.

The chase for a 'perfect car' can be a real problem when too many things aren't working correctly, but this elite degree of feel made Raikkonen a formidable weapon during F1's tyre war between Bridgestone and Michelin in the 2000s, and still has potency now in Pirelli's era of controlled compounds, given testing is so severely limited. Experience is very valuable.

Raikkonen's feel and fussiness for car set-up is both a blessing and a curse. He is limited by the front end (understeer) in the inverse way that Jenson Button was usually limited by the rear (oversteer) when he competed in F1.

Chief operating officer Jonathan Neale recalls how McLaren found its suspension development pulled "in two different directions" owing to Raikkonen's demand for instant steering response from its cars, while Pat Fry, who was Ferrari's chief engineer when Raikkonen returned to Maranello in 2014, found his team coming up against that same age-old problem - one exacerbated by stiff and hard Pirelli tyres that Raikkonen often struggled to get working for a single flying lap in qualifying.

"He has a very smooth driving style - you've got to get rid of the understeer in the car," says Fry. "You can obviously play around with suspension geometries and stuff like that to try to give him the feel, and sort out power steering and all that stuff."

Such a habit limits the range of Raikkonen's scope to perform to his best. He is not flexible in his driving and wants the car to be moulded around this preference. This is an undoubted negative in his overall make-up compared to someone like Alonso or Hamilton - they are happier to work around what they are given.

But the flip side is that Raikkonen's obsession with getting the car absolutely right gives Ferrari a clear direction on how best to set up its machine on race weekends. This didn't work with Alonso at the team, because his style is much less front-limited, but Vettel wants very similar things to Raikkonen from the car, which simplifies the set-up direction for Ferrari.

"I think Kimi is one of those guys that if he thought 'I just can't drive one of these cars as quick as I used to', he would stop" Raikkonen's personal trainer Mark Arnall

"I think our cars now, with Seb there, are very similar," Raikkonen says. "Comparing the past there are more differences. I think for the team it is good, because they can go in one direction. It's much easier - that when we go somewhere we go as one. We can try many things and know if it's good for you it's good for him."

Much has been made of the newfound harmony at Mercedes this year, as the bitter Hamilton/Nico Rosberg rivalry has made way for happier times with Hamilton paired alongside Bottas.

The same applies at Ferrari, where Vettel and Raikkonen enjoy a close and productive working relationship shorn of any political machinations behind the scenes.

"Of all Formula 1 drivers, he is probably closer to him [Vettel] than any of the others," says Raikkonen's long-time personal trainer Mark Arnall, who arranged for Vettel to travel with Raikkonen on a private jet when Vettel was first in F1, and recalls Vettel's rapid progression playing badminton against Raikkonen.

"Kimi always liked Seb and I think Seb always liked Kimi. They are good friends - as much as you can be in this sort of environment.

"The thing about Kimi is that he is not political at all, so to be his team-mate is actually very easy as he doesn't stir up any shit in the background. He is very transparent. Harmony in the team is something that is massively underrated. It makes a huge difference."

Paired alongside Vettel, Raikkonen's own performances have steadily improved too, to the point where he has again challenged for poles and victories during a season in which F1's return to grippier tyres and faster cars suits his high-momentum style.

Much is and will yet be made of Raikkonen's deference to Vettel's title ambitions, after giving up potential victories to his team-mate in Monaco and Hungary earlier this year, but this is nothing new at Ferrari.

Raikkonen was aided to his only title by Felipe Massa in 2007 and returned the favour after a bad run of unreliability the following year. Raikkonen's results were poor over the early races of this year; Vettel's exceptional. It makes sense in this context to throw everything behind Vettel - especially knowing the Mercedes is still fundamentally the quickest car across the broadest range of circuits.

Raikkonen knows the score. He would be the first to admit he should have done a better job getting his car set up properly over the first three races. Had he done so, things might be different.

Those who argue he isn't pulling his weight in the constructors' championship (and hasn't done so for a while) have a fair point, but they should also remember the incidents in Spain and Baku that cost him a bucketload of points through no fault of his own.

Had he not been taken out by Verstappen and Bottas in Spain, nor become an innocent casualty of the Force India collision in Azerbaijan, Raikkonen wouldn't be far behind Bottas in the drivers' standings and Ferrari would likely be within 10 points of Mercedes in the constructors'.

Ifs, buts and maybes. Yes, but the important thing is Raikkonen was performing well enough to deserve those points. And there are those races in Monaco and Hungary. When Ferrari has been at its best, Raikkonen has performed strongly - taking his first pole since 2008 and driving well enough to have won twice in different circumstances. That suggests he is still capable of competing with the very best, and Ferrari will see that.

That's not to say there aren't rivals out there who are and could be doing an even better job if given the chance, but none (with absolute conviction) are readily and cheaply available. So, yet again, it's a case of 'better the devil you know' for Ferrari.

"I think Kimi is one of those guys that if he thought 'I just can't drive one of these cars as quick as I used to', he would stop," reckons Arnall. "Kimi brings a shitload of experience, he's very good with the development of the car, very non-political, an easy team-mate for people to have, so I think as an overall package, he is [still] very good.

"I think his belief is that he can still compete near the top. He is very honest with himself - if he didn't think that was the case, he'd stop."

Many would argue that he should have stopped a while ago - that his continuing presence on the grid, in such a coveted seat, is baffling when you consider he hasn't been definitively quicker than any of his last four team-mates in F1. But what does Raikkonen himself think - does he believe he is as good a driver now as he ever was?

"That's so hard to say," he replies. "I feel that I can drive as well as 2007 and 2001, or whatever people think has been my best-ever [year]. For me, if I wouldn't feel that I can drive well, or couldn't win races or championships, I wouldn't be here, because I don't have interest to waste my own time and everyone else's time.

"I value my own time too much to use it on something that I wouldn't be happy, or that I wouldn't think that I can actually do it well. Plus, all the other people who would waste their time and money on something that I just want to be part of. It's not the most friendly place to be if you don't really want to be..."

That Ferrari continues to place its faith in Raikkonen suggests it feels, beyond the headline results and numbers, that he is still fundamentally among the very best drivers in the world, and that it recognises deeper layers of style, character, substance and ability that make Raikkonen something more than the sum of his parts.

He is enigmatic and mercurial, and hasn't been world champion for a decade, but clearly possesses extra qualities that F1's biggest team finds are still worth investing in.

Raikkonen may lack the single-minded dedication of some of his peers; he may not be the out-and-out fastest driver on the grid anymore; he may well be too Button-esque in his over-reliance on particular car characteristics to be a properly consistent force; he may not be as adaptable as some of his rivals; Formula 1 may only be a job to him, rather than an all-consuming obsession - but what's wrong with being naturally gifted enough at your job that you don't feel the need to take your work home with you every day?

His critics will argue that's not good enough - that Raikkonen has long outstayed his welcome in Formula 1 and at Ferrari in particular. They will no doubt be outraged that F1's most famous team has handed this enigma yet another lease of life. But one thing is for sure: Raikkonen will not care what they think, and that in itself is another reason his grand prix career continues to run and run.