Former F1 team principal Otmar Szafnauer has revealed he was in discussions to sign Kimi Raikkonen when the Finn made his return to the sport.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
After departing F1 at the end of the 2009 season to dip his feet into rallying, Raikkonen targeted a comeback to F1 in 2012.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Among the teams interested in Raikkonen was Force India, where Szafnauer worked in a senior management role.\u00a0\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
The Silverstone-based squad had just come off the back of its most successful season to date with a run to sixth in the constructors’ standings.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
However, Raikkonen ultimately chose to return to Lotus, where he picked up two victories across two seasons before returning to Ferrari in 2014.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Detailing his late-2011 encounter with Raikkonen, Szafnauer told High Performance Racing: \u201cI nearly signed Kimi Raikkonen to Force India before he went to Lotus.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\u201c[It was] Brazil – can\u2019t remember the year – last race, I had to meet Kimi at the Hyatt in Morumbi. It’s where we were all staying.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\u201cI met him with two of his buddies, trying to convince him to come to Force India.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\u201cHe said, \u2018Okay, at the end of the season, come and talk to me\u2019. His two buddies, I think, were the founders of Angry Birds, the game.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\u201cRaikkonen says, \u2018Let\u2019s go talk at the Red Bull party\u2019. Red Bull were having a massive party at the end of the season. We get there, and I’m thinking, \u2018We’re not going to get in, the crowds are huge’.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\u201cWe couldn\u2019t get in, but they recognised Kimi. So [they said] \u2018Kimi, right this way\u2019 and they opened up all the [doors] they had there.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\u201cKimi waited for every one of us to get in before he stepped through.\u201d\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Article continues below.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tRaikkonen’s future lay elsewhere<\/p>\n
In 2012, Force India retained Paul di Resta and paired him alongside Nico Hulkenberg, who was promoted from a test driver role.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
Szafnauer conceded that Force India did not have the performance to attract the 2007 champion at the time.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\u201cAs it turned out, I couldn’t convince him to come to Force India,\u201d he said.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a bit of everything. You have to convince drivers, too, that the future looks rosier than the other offers that they have.\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd to be fair to him, he went to Lotus at a time when they won more races than we did. They were better at that point; they still had James Allison there at that time.\u201d\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former F1 team principal Otmar Szafnauer has revealed he was in discussions to sign Kimi Raikkonen when the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":685515,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,827,830,828,831,829,826,813,823,825,806,805,824,803,804,822,85],"class_list":["post-685514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-daniel-ricciardo","tag-f1-calendar","tag-f1-live","tag-f1-results","tag-f1-standings","tag-ferrari","tag-formula-1","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-max-verstappen","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motorsport","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-racing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=685514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/685514\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/685515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=685514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=685514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=685514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}