Kimi Raikkonen isn’t worrying about his Formula 1 future, simply stating he’ll “have an answer before next year”.
Having turned 40 last year, the 2007 world champion is the grandfather of a grid that continues to only get younger. Indeed, this year the Finn could still surpass Rubens Barrichello as F1’s most experienced driver should 11 races take place.
But with each passing year comes the question of retirement and with his contract at Alfa Romeo expiring, he was on Thursday if the decision to push back next year’s planned rule changes until 2022 had affected his thinking.
“It doesn’t dictate what happens in the future, I’ll have an answer before next year starts but we haven’t done a single race and it’s been an odd situation this year. We will see what happens,” he said.
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Instead, Raikkonen appeared to suggest the performance of Alfa Romeo would be the most likely criteria to decide if he will continue in F1 for another year.
“We’ll see, if we do [well] then it is more fun than if we don’t do well,” he acknowledged.
“But we don’t know where we are going to be so we will do our best to go from this weekend and go from there, then the future will be decided at some point.”
As for Alfa’s potential, Raikkonen was his usual straightforward self.
“Testing every year… it’s impossible to say who is where,” he said. “There’s a lot of speculation.
“But in the first race, we always see what is the real story, and we never managed to do the first race.
“Now, months later, we’re obviously going to do it. Then we’ll see where we are. People are bringing updates, so who knows. We’ll see.”
