Kimi Raikkonen will do his first appearance on the races since his retirement of Formula 1. He will participate on the NASCAR Cup Series at Watkins Glen on August.
Raikkonen will join to the Trackhouse Racing team the August 21 on the Watkins (New York) race. He will drive a Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 with the regular drivers of the team, the Mexican Daniel Suarez and the American Ross Chastain.
It will be the first time that Raikkonen will participate on a car event since his 20 years career as F1 driver. He announced his retirement the last December, with the last race at Abu Dabi with the Alfa Romeo team.
The 2007 world championship of F1 has history at NASCAR. The Finnish ran a race at the Nationwide Series (now known as Xfinity Series) and on a Truck Series race at 2011 with Kyle Busch Motorsports during his sabbatical year of F1.
Raikkonen explained that at first he doesn´t want to race on a seriously way after leaving Formula 1. But the agreement between the driver and Trackhouse Racing advanced and finished with the registration of the pilot to Watkins Glen.
“We had more conversations about how it would work, where would the race be and all kinds of things” said the Finnish.
“There are many things involved and all had sense for me. It is a race, so would have sense for all of us as family. I always enjoyed when I had my few races. I hope that we will have a good race and we let´s have fun. Is a new car obviously and I have never been on the track, but I am sure that we can fix it“, explained.
The Raikkonen entrance with Trackhouse Racing is produced as part of Proyect91 team. The team want to increase the range of NASCAR dedicating his #91 car to drivers of international races. With Chastain and Suarez, Trackhouse has now three pilots of three different countries for the Watkins Glen race.
The owner of Trackhouse Racing explained his admiration for the pilot: “I have been a big fan of Kimi during a lot of time, I have followed his career since he started on the Formula 1 with Sauber“.
Marks (owner of Trackhouse ) visited Raikkonen on his house in Switzerland to talk about the agreement. He “selled” correctly the idea, according to Kimi.
Jorge Barbero
