Ferrari driver Kimi Raikkonen has confirmed what we all knew, that he would be leaving the team at the end of the season. Sauber’s Charles Leclerc will replace him at Scuderia Ferrari while Raikkonen will drive for Sauber F1, the team he made his F1 debut with in 2001.
Driven.co.nz states that this is one of the most surprising announcements in recent F1 history? Does that mean it is more surprising than Daniel Ricciardo’s recent announcement that he will move from Red Bull F1 Racing to Renault f1 Team?
No, it is no surprise because there has never been any talk of Raikkonen retiring at the end of 2018. F1 reporter Joe Saward had him moving to McLaren but then they went and confirmed that Lando Norris will take the second seat alongside Carlos Sainz Jr.
Stuff.co.nz (at the time of writing) hasn’t even run a story on this seat swap. In fact, they do have a rather odd article reporting that Speedweek (the Red Bull motorsport website which is entirely in German) says that Brendon Hartley has been told to improve or risk losing his seat with Toro Rosso having 10 options for next year. Please Stuff, let’s quote more mainstream F1 websites.
“There has to be a big improvement in the last few races of the season,” Red Bull advisor Dr Helmut Marko said of Hartley in an interview with Speedweek on Wednesday (NZT).
Ten options! Let’s not forget that they have two seats to fill and out of their ten options realistically there may be three and one of those will be Hartley.
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