Kimi Räikkönen

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Kimi-Matias Räikkönen (; born 17 October 1979 in Espoo), nicknamed Iceman, is a Finnish racing and rally driver. After nine seasons racing in Formula One, in which he took the Formula One World Drivers' Championship, he will now take part in the World Rally Championship for the Citroën Junior Team in .

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Räikkönen entered Formula One as a regular driver for Sauber-Petronas in . Having previously only raced in very junior open-wheel categories, he was given his Super Licence from the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) after a performance delivery promise by his team boss, Peter Sauber. He joined McLaren Mercedes in , and became a title contender by finishing runner-up in the and championships to Michael Schumacher and Fernando Alonso, respectively.

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Switching to Ferrari in 2007, Räikkönen became the highest paid driver in motor sport with an estimated wage of $51 million per year, in part because the previous highest paid driver, Michael Schumacher, had retired. In turn his move to Ferrari saw him secure his first Formula One World Drivers' Championship, beating McLaren drivers Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso by one point. After two more years in the sport, he left the Ferrari F1 team to drive a Citroën C4 in the World Rally Championship for 2010.

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Räikkönen is known to be very calm, cool, and calculating in his race strategy?prompting the nickname "Iceman", which is subtly written on the side of his current helmet design. His other nicknames include Kimppa, Räikkä and Kimster (used by his mechanics).

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In , Räikkönen was among the two Formula One drivers who made it into the Forbes magazine's The Celebrity 100 list, the other being Fernando Alonso. He is 36th on Forbes magazine's The Celebrity 100 list of 2008, and 41st on the previous year. On the same list, as of 2008, he is listed as the 26th highest paid celebrity overall and the 5th highest paid sportsman behind Tiger Woods, David Beckham, Michael Jordan and Phil Mickelson. In , Räikkönen was listed as the equal 2nd highest paid athlete in the world, behind Woods.

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Espoo: Espoo (IPA: /ˈespoː/; Esbo in Swedish) is a city on the Southern coast of Finland. It is part of the Helsinki Metropolitan Area along with Helsinki, Vantaa and Kauniainen. Espoo shares its eastern border with Helsinki and Vantaa, while enclosing Kauniainen. Other bordering municipalities a...

Finnish: Finnish may refer to:...

Formula One: :F1 redirects here. For other uses of the abbreviation, see F1 (disambiguation)....

Kimi Räikkönen related Images and Photos (experimental)

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