Kimi Räikkönen prepares for WRC debut in Sweden

Citroen stable has messy day on Wedenesday: Loeb finds snow and Räikkönen gets shunted

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Although Rally Sweden and the 2010 World Rally Championship season only gets under way with a special stage tonight, the WRC Citroens were involved in fender-benders on Wednesday in the Karlstad area.
      World Champion Sebastien Loeb had an excursion into a snowdrift, while rookie Kimi Räikkönen, driving for the Citroen junior team, got shunted by another car at a junction.
     
"The car behind us couldn't stop in time and clouted us on the driver's side as we turned", explained Räikkönen's co-driver Kaj Lindström, who played down the incident, in which nobody was hurt, except perhaps the pride of the Finnish driver who caused the shunt.
      Loeb, too, was dug out of the snow without mishap, and those spectators who helped to extricate him got themselves a photo opportunity alongside the six-time world champion.
     
Although he is really only a visiting star and is not actually battling for this year's WRC title, Kimi Räikkönen packed out the foyer of the hotel in Karlstad where he was answering a few questions from the media.
      The Swedes are clearly quite pleased that belting around in the snowy forests of Värmland in Western Sweden they have a man who was after all "the second highest-paid sporting star in 2009 after Tiger Woods".
      The media certainly lapped him up.
      Räikkönen came in smiling, but was less enthusiastic about the flashbulbs going off in his face.
     
He acknowledged that the Swedish event was going to be a tougher challenge than his outing in the Arctic Lapland Rally last month, but said he hoped they would be able to avoid the mistakes made in Rovaniemi, where his hopes of a good placing were dashed by crashing out into a snowdrift during the second special stage of the first day.
      Though Räikkönen and Lindström continued, and set good times, they finished well down the field.
     
Kimi Räikkönen probably gets more than his fair share of dumb questions directed his way, and he is visibly tiring of the repeated enquiries about the similarities and differences between Formula One and rallying.
      "Look, all cars have four wheels, gears, and a steering wheel", he offered to yet another "how does it compare?" question.
     
Rally Sweden begins today with one special stage in Karlstad, and then runs through a further 20 stages before the finish on Sunday afternoon.
      It is the first of 13 rounds of the season, culminating in the Wales Rally in November, and at the end of July the circus will be coming to Finland and Jyväskylä for the Neste Oil Rally. 
       


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Räikkönen learns a lot in Arctic Lapland Rally, his first race as full-time rally driver (1.2.2010)

Links:
  2010 World Rally Championship (Wikipedia)
  Citroen Racing
  Rally Sweden
  World Rally Championship

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