Formula One news

Kimi so happy it hurts

Kimi Raikkonen landed at Zurich airport in the afternoon. These are his first words as world champion back in Europe: "I am so happy it almost hurts!"

"This is like a dream come true," added the new champion. "This is something I wanted to reach since I've been a child. I was seven years old when I first saw a race track: it was an old, small kart circuit called Bembole; just five kilometres from where I lived. It was like a second home for me."

"I've always said that the aim of my career is to become world champion," he went on. "I came very close a couple of times and in the end everything turned out fine. We have always given our best to try to win. Doing that in sport you have to always push to the max until the end. You never know what may happen in a race; you only have to look at the last three races and you know what I'm talking about. Fuji was really terrible for us: we were at the back of the pack and our race was over almost immediately."

"We left Japan and were 17 points behind, without the possibility to fight back," Raikkonen went on. "I think I can say that not more than ten people outside of the team would have bet on us. But we didn't give up. In a certain sense we believe in miracles. China was our joker: we won and the driver on the top of the standings didn't make any points. That gave us some hope, but there weren't many chances for us left. The last race was really emotional. The first four drivers in the field didn't retire, but there was a tough fight for positions between us and our competitors. Maybe I had the best start of the season and maybe I could have passed also Felipe at the first corner, but I had a plan and it didn't involve a fight with my teammate. I could see in my mirrors that Hamilton was next to Alonso in turn 3 and that he had a problem. I realized that we had the chance we had hoped for: this first lap seemed to be decisive for the whole championship."

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