Kimi Räikkönen Karting in 1998

Next season this man will drive for Ferrari but here in this video Kimi Räikkönen is just a karting driver. The video is from 1998 and it's in Finnish. He's talking about what it is like to be a pro karting driver. He also says that he might be in Formula One some day.

Funny that he is driving on a track that I have also driven on when I was a junior kart driver. The track is in Espoo, Finland where he used to live.

Kimi Räikkönen tested a GP3 car!

Lotus F1 driver Kimi Raikkonen tested on Friday, a GP3 car in Barcelona.

Raikkonen offered his know-how as a favor to the Finnish Koiranen GP team.

- I wanted to test the GP3/13 car because my friend Afa Heikkinen has a team in this series, and I am closely following their progress and results since the beginning of the season. I was interested to see how the car behaves, and it was fun to drive. The behavior of the car had a few problems, but we were able to solve most of them. GP3/13 is a very good tool for young drivers, especially when you need to learn how to care for the tires, just like in Formula One, Raikkonen commented on the GP3 Series website.

Raikkonen drove on the Circuit de Catalunya on Friday, a total of 58 laps and 270 kilometers.

The GP3 Series and the tire manufacturer Pirelli's official test session examined the tires and how they behaved.

-Kimi's experience and the feedback was invaluable and helped us to understand better what you need to do to make the car work better for overtaking next season, the GP3 Series technical director Didier Perrin said.

-We want to thank Kimi for testing with us and Koiranen GP for making this possible.

F1 TREASURES III

I went for a walk with my dog and then I noticed a flea market less than a mile from my house.

Of course I had to go and check out the books as always. 

The first book I grabbed in my hand was a Formula One dictionary from the year 2001. Yes an alphabetical F1 dictionary about everything!

The price was only 1 euro.

The book is in finnish but fortunately I understand that language as well.

Earlier I said that in Finland every F1 related book and magazine cover always has a Finn on it. Finnish people would rather do an interview with Tommi Pärmäkoski (Vettel's former personal trainer) than the champion himself. It has nothing to do with Vettel it's just that the people are very patriotic.

On this book cover you can see Kimi Räikkönen in his Sauber.

And on the back cover you can see Mika Häkkinen in his McLaren. He was my favorite F1 driver after Ayrton Senna had passed away in 1994.

When you open the book you can see Mika Häkkinen again in a little bit better picture. 

Not a big surprise!

Then we have the introduction and it's written by the first Finn to ever drive in a Grand Prix.

This is Leo Kinnunen.

He's just saying that when he was driving in the 70's there wasn't any good information on motor sports in Finland. Now there is books like this one and all the GP's are shown on TV!

That's all I found this time. 

Now it's time for me to go and read this!

Monaco, Race Of Kings -documetary

A classic Formula One documentary about the most legendary racing track.

F1 Magazines

When I travel or just like to read a magazine it's always Formula One related. The picture above shows just a few that I found lying around my house. In the middle there's a huge stack of F1 Racing (all of the 2012 issues and some from 2013). 

I used to subscribe to F1 Racing but not anymore. Now I just buy them from a store if I manage to find an issue. It's hard to find the magazine if you don't live in London for example. When I was there I saw them in every supermarket. But in other countries you have to look for them in bookstores for instance. 

I remember when I read my first F1 Racing magazine in 1997. An issue was accidentally delivered to my house and I couldn't resist. I was a teenager with no money so when could I ever read a magazine like that? 

I don't remember what they were talking about in that issue but I bet it had to do with, Villeneuve, Hill, Schumacher and Häkkinen. Back then everything was about them. Just like today it's all about Vettel, Räikkönen, Alonso, Hamilton and Button.

There is a few Finnish Formula One magazines as well. Actually they are bonus issues that you can buy together with other newspapers. In the Scandinavian countries there isn't really any F1 magazines so basically I bought everything there was.

It's not very hard to guess which magazines are from Finland. Finns who don't follow Formula One at all know who Kimi is and that's why he is on the covers. Some people hate motor sports but they might just be interested of Kimi Räikkönen.

I have found some magazines in Finland about motor racing in general but not a single one that would be just for F1 fans. If I am wrong then please send me a message. I like to read in finnish as well and not only in english.

All in all I prefer magazines more than reading from the internet. Sitting in front of the computer hurts my eyes sometimes when reading a magazine is relaxing. You can sit in your favorite chair or just chill on the sofa.

That's what I'm gonna do right now! See ya!

Which country is the most successful in Formula One?

Jim Clark from Great Britain in his Lotus

Here are the top 5 countries:

(all the victories are not made by world champions)

1. Great Britain - 226 victories, 14 world championships / 10 world champions (Mike Hawthorn, Graham Hill, Jim Clark, John Surtees, Jackie Stewart, James Hunt, Nigel Mansell, Damon Hill, Lewis Hamilton, Jenson Button)

2. Germany - 136 victories, 10 world championships / 2 world champions (Michael Schumacher, Sebastian Vettel)

3. Brazil - 101 victories, 8 world championships / 3 world champions (Emerson Fittipaldi, Nelson Piquet, Ayrton Senna)

4. France - 79 victories, 4 world championships / 1 world champion (Alain Prost)

5. Finland - 46 victories, 4 world championships / 3 world champions (Keke Rosberg, Mika Häkkinen, Kimi Räikkönen)

But is it fair to compare these countries like this? Some countries are much bigger than others and some have much more people.

If you would divide by the population then Finland would be number one. Finland is also the most successful of the countries that doesn't have a home grand prix.

Then on the other hand there is a lot of countries that have GP's but no drivers at the moment in F1 (China, Abu Dhabi / Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Singapore, Malaysia, Belgium, Canada, United States, Korea, Hungary, Monaco, India).

These are just statistics and useless facts. The drivers don't drive for their countries, they are driving for their teams.

The most successful teams in F1 history are: 

1. Ferrari - 221 victories
2. McLaren - 182 victories
3. Williams - 114 victories
4. Lotus - 79 victories
5. Red Bull - 37 victories

I'll ramble some more about random F1 records and statistics tomorrow.

My 60th post in 3 weeks! - My F1 book collection

This is my complete Formula One book collection. I have got most of these books as gifts.

My friends and family know that I am a Formula One fanatic so it's quite easy to buy me F1 stuff as gifts (unless I already own them of course).

I always get the season reviews on DVD but sometimes it's nice to read about the season from a book. Some books even have extra stuff between the pages. For example the book that is called "The treasures of Formula One" has old cards from different F1 races, ticket replicas from historical races, maps, flyers etc. You can't get that from a DVD!

Some of my books are in finnish because that's my second language. The finnish books are usually extremely patriotic and mainly about finnish drivers. For example the book under Hamilton's biography is a book called "Sinivalkoisia Formula 1 -hetkiä" which means "Blue and white Formula 1 moments". The colors come from the finnish flag of course.

The first finnish driver was Leo Kinnunen in the 70's. He didn't really succeed in F1 but the finns were very proud anyways. Later there was a man named Mikko Kozarowitzky who tried F1 but failed to qualify in 2 races and it was the end of it. Then came Keke Rosberg who became world champion in 1982. After this moment F1 was one of the most popular sports in Finland that was shown on TV.

I went a bit off topic there but I hope you found it interesting. So if you buy a F1 book in Finland it's easier to find reading material about finnish drivers than F1 itself. In my opinion it's a bit strange that some people are more interested about a person than the sport itself. I mean I don't need drivers from my country to drive F1 to enjoy it. I watch it anyways..

If I buy any new books I will post it here and maybe talk a bit about it. A small review if you will.

By the way! If you have something F1 related in finnish you would like me to translate then just ask.

Mika Hakkinen teaches Captain Slow to drive - Top Gear

This Top Gear episode is hilarious. Mika Häkkinen always makes me smile with his lack of words and corky finnish accent.

I shall post some more videos later today for you to watch.

Tomorrow I am going to talk about all the newest F1 rumors out there.