Personally, I like Kimi for exactly the same reason that you guys don’t. Maybe I’ve had enough of the smiling, eloquent and smarmy type such as Mickey the Shoe, but I like a man who keeps his thoughts to himself.

Consider the fuss going on over at F1 Fanatic at the moment all because Alonso’s a whiner. Surely Kimi’s approach to having a team mate that persists in beating him half of the time is much better than making excuses to the press. I have been impressed with Kimi’s handling of the situation – he surely is the Iceman and we will probably never know what really goes on in that Finnish brain of his.

What the heck, there’s probably a post in this so I’ll shut up and go write it…

As for Fernando, I seem to recall that in the past couple of years he made trips to the Renault factory and gave great speeches to motivate or thank the workers there – how the times have changed now he is working out of McLaren’s HQ!

I see ’speed’ as encompassing many attributes. Mika Hakkinen was a much faster driver than Michael Schumacher. But Schumacher had the ability to form a strong unit around him, motivate the right people and get a decent motor built that he could race.

Kimi is a much faster driver than Massa in terms of raw speed – I’m convinced of that. But Massa has the charisma, the charm and a way of getting people to side with him when the opportunities are 50/50 split between them. Which driver does the car suit more? I’m willing to bet Massa, because he was there for an extra couple of years, gave and gained some loyalty and made a few friends. That makes him have an edge over Raikkonen in terms of intra-team politics. It’s going to be interesting what happens over the next few races at Ferrari.

Now that Michael Schumacher has retired, I think Kimi must be the most popular driver in F1. It’s hard not to feel for the guy when you’ve seen him robbed of so many wins by bad luck or circumstances and, despite his apparent inability to overshadow Massa, we still tend to think that he’s the fastest driver out there. I hate to say it but he really is shaping up to be a second Stirling Moss.