Raikkonen before F1?

[Bedford]

Just watched the local coverage of MotoGP, and Mick Doohan was commentating, and mentioned something about Raikkonen only doing 20 races before going to F1.
What was Raikkonens race experience prior to F1?
Surely it was more than 20 races!

[thejester]

http://www.f1db.com/f1/page/Kimi_Raikkonen

Lots of karting, not many cars.

23 races it says here:http://autoracing.about.com/od/formu...ikkonen_F1.htm

Someone here will confirm

[DavidStHubbins]

He did an aborted part-season in British Formula Renault against Pizzonia but Pizzaboy was in the dominant team and chassis make and trounced all and sundry so Kimi's management took him out of the season early to test formula ford , other cars etc and he did the formula ford festival THEN did a full year in Renault after that where he cleaned up easily. Once he was in the best car.

[mountainstar]

He did 4 races in Formula Renault before getting sick(I believe that was the story) and his manager pulled the plug for the year. Results were not good anyways. There was nothing seen at the time that demonstrated he was anything special. Then the next year, he came back and cleaned house in FR. His managers, the Robertson gang, prodded Sauber to give Kimi a test, which was done. Kimi had some problems, but did well enough that Sauber decided to take a punt on him and the rest is history.

[Bedford]

Wow, that's impressive!
I guess that's probably a good way to do it. If a driver shows potential, throw them in the seat before they go race other cars and develop habits that don't agree with F1 cars.