Szafnauer: “I almost signed Räikkönen to Force India”

2012: ‘Iceman’s return to F1 At the end of the 2009 season, two years after winning his first and only F1 world title, Kimi Räikkönen decided to retire from the Circus, opening a chapter in his WRC career. In 2012, however, the last world champion in Ferrari’s history chose to return to F1 for his second spell, reaching an agreement with Lotus. Yet, before signing with the English team, several teams tried to open negotiations with the Finn, starting with Force India. Szafnauer’s attempt After a good season, it was Otmar Szafnauer who approached Räikkönen in particular, at the time engaged in a management role aimed at improving the team’s performance. In a podcast interview with High Performance Racing, the Romanian-American engineer recalled how close he actually came to hiring Räikkönen, with the latter then choosing to embrace the Lotus project: “I almost signed Kimi Räikkönen to Force India before he went to Lotus – he admitted – he was in Brazil, I don’t remember the year, before the last race. I was supposed to meet Kimi at the Hyatt from Morumbi, where we were all staying. I met him with two of his friends, trying to convince him to come to Force India. He said to me: ‘Okay, at the end of the season, come and talk to me.’ His two friends, I think, were the founders of Angry Birds, the video game. there’s a huge crowd.’ We couldn’t get in, but they recognized Kimi. So they said, ‘Kimi, this way,’ and they opened all the doors they had for us. Kimi waited for us to come in before crossing the threshold.” The admission For the 2012 season, in the end, Szafnauer confirmed Paul Di Resta and promoted Nico Hülkenberg from the role of test driver, but with hindsight he admitted that the team did not have sufficient performance to be able to hire a world champion like ‘Iceman’: “I wasn’t able to convince him – he concluded – it was a combination of factors. We also need to convince the drivers that the future seems brighter than the other offers they received. To the credit of true, he went to Lotus at a time when they were winning more races than us. They were stronger in that period, and they still had James Allison.”

Automobile Magazine – F1 English News , 2026-06-01 21:15:00