Valtteri Bottas insists securing a contract to race a Williams in 2013 would not change his life. The young Finn, who this year has been testing on Fridays for the famous British team, is waiting to know if he will debut as expected alongside Pastor Maldonado next year. "I don't think it would change anything," Bottas told Finland's Turun Sanomat, when asked how a race contract would change his life. "I would race just as I have done in other classes. Of course, I would […]

Kimi Raikkonen has said that he is enjoying Formula One, but doesn't know what 2014 will hold. Raikkonen returned to F1 with Lotus at the start of this season and will remain with the team for 2013. "I hope that we will have a good car - and the indications point in that direction. It will be a bit easier to start into the season because now we know what to expect from each other in the team", he told the Official F1 website. "So […]

Alguersuari, Sutil, Buemi, Senna, Bianchi and Razia are all in line for a 2013 race seat

Kimi Raikkonen has dismissed as "rubbish" a conspiracy theory about Fernando Alonso's retirement from recent grands prix. A Spanish newspaper correspondent said last week he saw a possible link between the fact Lotus drivers Raikkonen and Romain Grosjean were involved in the incidents that knocked former runaway championship leader Alonso out of the races at Suzuka and Spa respectively. The reporter also recalled that it was Renault's Vitaly Petrov who blocked Alonso at the 2010 world championship finale, with all three incidents helping the similarly […]

A worried Red Bull is travelling to Singapore this week, hoping a spate of alternator problems do not return under the Asian city-state's floodlights. Sebastian Vettel and Lotus' similarly Renault-powered Romain Grosjean were halted at Valencia earlier this year, and the problem returned on Vettel's Red Bull at Monza. Then it emerged that the Pirelli test car, fitted with a 2010 specification of the Renault alternator, struck similar problems recently, while Grosjean substitute Jerome d'Ambrosio's Lotus almost failed at Monza. "We do not need to […]

Lotus team owner Gerard Lopez has moved to silence the persistent rumours about Kimi Raikkonen's future. Recently, the impressive F1 returnee and Finn was linked with a switch next year to his former title-winning team Ferrari. And now amid the Lewis Hamilton rumours, some have mentioned 32-year-old Raikkonen as the ideal successor, reprising his five-year McLaren career of 2002-2006. Lotus team figures have, however, revealed that Raikkonen is on a two-year contract. But, in F1, contractual situations are usually complicated, with drivers and teams often […]

Andrea Stella, Fernando Alonso's race engineer at Ferrari, has singled out Kimi Raikkonen as a challenger for the 2012 championship. The buzz in the sodden Spa paddock is that four-time Belgian grand prix winner Raikkonen is a true contender for Sunday's victory at the wheel of a Lotus. And the Finn, who in 2007 won the title for Ferrari, is still within shouting distance in the drivers' standings, just a point shy of Lewis Hamilton's fourth place. "Of course Kimi can challenge Fernando in the […]

The technical concept known in the paddock this year as 'double DRS' looks set to be banned for 2013. Mercedes debuted the controversial straightline speed-boosting concept earlier this year, moving Lotus to lodge an official protest. But instead of taking the FIA's decision to allow Mercedes to keep the system to the international court of appeal, Lotus emerged with a new interpretation of 'double DRS' during practice at Hockenheim recently. The team practiced with the system on Kimi Raikkonen's car again at the Hungaroring, technical […]

After inheriting the final podium position in the German Grand Prix, Kimi heads to his ‘home’ event in Hungary hopeful of another strong result and perhaps some celebrating with his fellow Finns. You’re up to fourth in the Driver’s Championship with only a small gap to the drivers directly in front; where can you go from here? If you had told me in January that we would be fourth halfway through the season, I think I would have been pretty pleased. It’s not a bad […]

Heikki Kovalainen and Jaime Alguersuari have emerged as possible candidates to move to Sauber next year. Rumours indicate that one of the duo could replace Japanese Kamui Kobayashi in 2013. Finland's Turun Sanomat claims that Peter Sauber regards Kovalainen, who is on the market after three seasons with the 2010 startup Caterham, as a potential Sauber driver. The 30-year-old driver is quoted as saying: "Personally, my goal is to return to the top positions, but I don't know where. I haven't talked to anyone. "It […]

Valencia has sold less than 40,000 tickets ahead of next weekend's European grand prix. El Pais newspaper reports that, of the street circuit's deliberately reduced capacity of 45,000 seats, only 85 per cent have been sold. And of the 38,000 tickets sold, 64 per cent of them were purchased by foreign visitors, the Spanish publication added. Spain has been devastated by the European financial crisis, with unemployment at almost 25 per cent and the European Union needing to inject $125 billion to rescue crippled banks. […]

Lotus has refused Kimi Raikkonen permission to contest this year's Rally Finland. The Finn, who returned to Formula One in 2012 after two years in world rallying, admitted this week he wanted to do the Finnish rally in August but "you'll have to ask the team if it fits in my contract". "Contractually he cannot do it. End of story," Lotus team boss Eric Boullier told Reuters in Monaco. Boullier admitted the fact the Enstone based team's former regular driver, Robert Kubica, was seriously injured […]