Posted on 08/20/2022 10:03:49 AM PDT by MtnClimber
Kimi Raikkonen will take a break from his retirement to return to racing this weekend in the NASCAR race at Watkins Glen International in upstate New York.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Kimi Raikkonen retired to Switzerland at the end of last year's Formula One season and has blissfully spent the last eight months with his young family.
Did he miss racing?
“Not really, no," the 2007 F1 champion said.
Yet here he is, not even a full year into retirement, and Raikkonen will race again.
Raikkonen will race Sunday at Watkins Glen International in upstate New York in — and this isn't a typo — a NASCAR event. The driver known as “The Iceman” for his unintentionally droll demeanor was persuaded to get back behind the wheel by TrackHouse Racing and its ambitious, purpose-driven Project91 program.
Project91 was created to raise NASCAR's worldwide profile with top drivers from other formulas by Justin Marks, the 41-year-old former driver and now co-owner of NASCAR's hot, new winning team. He was prepared to personally fund the debut race at Watkins Glen, a road course where TrackHouse should compete for the win.
Tops on Marks' list of prospects was Raikkonen, who had previously competed in both an Xfinity Series and Truck Series race at Charlotte Motor Speedway during one weekend in 2011, the season Raikkonen took a one-year sabbatical in his 19-year F1 career. There was some bemusement over Raikkonen's mere presence in NASCAR's hotbed, but the most memorable part of his brief NASCAR career was that he was sponsored by Perky Jerky.
(Excerpt) Read more at abcnews.go.com ...
Curb feelers for finding the pit box?
Raikkonen drove at Charlotte in the Perky Jerky Toyota Tundra with the Nascar Truck series back in 2011, so he isn’t coming in totally cold.
You want him to crash?
It’s a road course and they run clockwise
No, I think he’s cool.
In FR tradition, I didn’t read it was Watkins Glen.
Usually you would be right
Every single other course, right?
Sometimes they turn left so much the cars are set up to crab walk that direction
Probably not that often but they’ve been adding more road courses
Who? lmao
I haven’t watched NASCAR since Jeff Gordon was a Champ...
Cross-discipline efforts are not productive from my perspective.
Muscle memory is not his friend - for so many years as an open-wheeler ar much higher speeds he will not translate well IMO.
pretty sure he’s just doing it for fun...
Exactly. It’s basically parallel parking.
Now I understand why the announcers kept saying she looked a little loose.
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