Report: Raikkonen says WRC could be permanent

The folks at Autosport got F1′s second-most desired interview after one with Michael Schumacher: Kimi Raikkonen.

While they are holding back a lot of it for their print magazine (and who can blame them), they have dripped a few nuggets out.

The story’s headline — hedeline for you old journalists, if there are any reading — sums up the big “news”: Raikkonen: WRC may be permanent.”

I put the word news in quotes because, as with everything involving Kimi, the man rarely gives a straight answer. I think it’s part of why we all are fascinated with him. It makes him seem genuine, albeit a bit cold and elusive. But he never seems to be working from talking points. [I always thought Ferrari did a good job of capturing that nature in its "Kimi Blogs".]

I also think one could just as easily argue the “news” is this: Kimi: I don’t know what I’ll be doing in 2011.

Here are some key parts:

“I don’t have any contract with F1 or anything else, so I have no idea what will happen,” he said. “I have both options, to stay in rallying or try to come back to F1. I want to see how it goes, and then decide. I’m not in a hurry to decide.

“If it goes well, then I could keep doing it. There are many different scenarios. Right now it’s just for this year, both with Red Bull and with Citroen.”

Raikkonen also reveals that he suspects there was more to Ferrari’s decision to get him out of his contract than simply his performance with the team.

“You have to ask them, I don’t know!” he says. “You need to ask the people who make those decisions. I’m not interested in the end why or when. I’m pretty sure I know the answer, and it’s nothing to do with racing or what I’ve done there.

“I think when there is enough money involved, you can always change anything! I think it’s a lot to do with Santander coming in. Probably they made some deal. I don’t know…”

Raikkonen admitted that he came close to signing for McLaren, and held talks with Brawn, but in the end could not secure himself the conditions that he wanted.

“I could have signed with them [McLaren] if I’d wanted to do, but in the end it wasn’t 100 per cent what I wanted. It was not really so much about money; it was all the other things. It’s not that I couldn’t have gone there but, like I said, I have no reason to do something with a contract that I’m not happy with.”

Raikkonen insisted, however, that money was not the key factor in preventing a deal happening – even though the terms of his release from Ferrari meant he would get less money if he secured another drive in F1.

“Yeah, for sure there is something that if I raced with another team, I get a bit less. And there was no point to get paid less if I race with somebody. It was a complicated situation, but in the end that wasn’t the issue, the money side, although everybody thinks so. It wasn’t what I wanted.”

Speaking about the Brawn situation, Raikkonen said: “Probably I could have gone there. I didn’t want to start waiting for a long time. For sure we could have got a contract in the end, but when the McLaren thing didn’t happen I already had the talks with Red Bull, so I just wanted to go there and see what happens in rallying. Maybe I’ll come back [to F1] next year or the year after. Or maybe not…”

So, more to the Ferrari story than we know. No surprise there, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want to hear more.

I think Kimi’s statements open up a few questions to ponder (some of them we’ve probably already touched on here):

1. Do you think he’ll enjoy rally so much that he won’t return to F1?
2. Do you think Kimi will bring enough fans that it will benefit WRC?
3. Do you think he’ll perform poorly enough that he just kind of fades from our thinking?