mcalex wrote:Another thing - Lotus had a very good front response and overall balance and as soon as they started to mock around wheel base llength it disturbed the balance that Kimi needs and he was slower. As soon as they gave him the SWB car again he was as fast as before ...
It´s not about the long wheelbase.
At Mclaren him and Montoya had different front suspension setups, at Lotus they went through a number of power steering systems, at Ferrari in 2008 he once again had front end problems and now back at Ferrari he´s got the same issues.
He´s obviously incredibly sensitive to how the front end behaves regardless of car and year.
With that said, if Vettel and Kimi has relatively similar driving styles Ferrari will automatically build a front suspension that suits Kimi because both guys will want roughly the same thing.
If they don´t have the same driving style Ferrari will put all their eggs in Vettel´s basket and Kimi will yet again struggle with the front end.
edit: just to give you an idea,
"Kimi does not like the behavior of the car's front end at the moment. He does not like how it fits into curves, because it is not responsive enough for him. But when we try to change it, then we lose the back"
- Alan Permaine 2013, Oct 15th.
"Raikkonen added “If we sort out the front end we lose the rear"
- Kimi, 2014, June 27th.
Kimi was up to fifteenth for much of the race, running on the lead lap and taking advantage of green-flag restarts to gain position. He struggled, however, with the car's front-end handling,
- Autoblog article, 2011
(NASCAR).
“Kimi was exactly the same at McLaren. He was always super-sensitive to the front end. When we had him and [Juan Pablo] Montoya together we had about seven different front suspensions. To get the best from Kimi you need to give him the car.”
- Fry
Kimi Raikkonen not only needs a teammate with a similar style (unless the team puts all their eggs in his basket) but he´s obviously extremely high maintenance just to get some decent performance out of him.
If i was a team owner i would never in a million years sign Kimi, you just know it´s gonna be possibly years of fiddling with power steering and front suspension layouts.
"If the only thing keeping a person decent is the expectation of divine reward, then brother that person is a piece of sh*t"