Raikkonen to do 9000km in winter testing this year...

[ESPImperium]

1. McLaren-Mercedes 23.866 Km
2. Williams 23.376 Km
3. Ferrari 23.329 Km
4. BMW Sauber F1 Team 23.220 Km
5. Toyota 22.759 Km
6. Renault 22.603 Km
7. Red Bull Racing 20.929 Km
8. Honda 18.636 Km
9. Scuderia Toro Rosso 18.223 Km
10. Force India 14.279 Km

Id expect most teams to take 2 cars to the post season testing, with the 30 Km testing limit and all. But i can see that Honda and posibly STR takeing 3 cars to the test season, as they have the reserve Km to do so... Man-power, i dont know.

But id expect most teams to have 3 cars there anyways, 2 doing areo and chassis work for 2009, and 1 of the teams older cars doing the testing for their KERS system for 2009.

All the teams will have to have all their driving tallent there, as im shure the testing at the end of the season will be gruling this time arround!!!

[shir0]

If true (will this break some rule on amount of testing allowed?), this should be a good thing.

I think if ESPImperium's post is current and accurate, there'd be no problem. It's just that if Kimi would really use up 9000km in testing runs, then he'd be using up SFM's remaining allowed testing KMs for this year. Which then would lead me to assume that Kimi will be taking up all remaining pre-season development duties for the F2009 car. If true, the big question for 2009 is how Massa will "fit into" the new car Kimi will be developing. But I digress at that point.

One thing I've never forgotten this season: a quote in MotorSport attributed to a Ferrari insider - "Technically, they [Kimi and Massa] are useless."

One wonders how well Ferrari might have done with a top quality development driver.

I don't know...Kimi's mechanics and engineers from his McMerc days always say that he's a good development driver and can give very accurate feedback. It was just back then, he (or McMerc) had always been plagued by unreliability. IMO, if he was still working for that team today he'd have won the championship last year by a considerable spread.

About top quality development drivers...they'd always relied on Badoer and Gene in lieu of their racing drivers even during the MS days. But test drivers are just that...test drivers. They can only do so much in developing a car for the race driver. It's always up to the race driver to drive the "tested" developments and fine tune it to his own liking. Like I said in my previous post on this thread...it might just be down to how much time Kimi had tested this year. And any reason why he hadn't put down those testing times when it had counted for this season is any one's guess.

[timbo]

I don't know...Kimi's mechanics and engineers from his McMerc days always say that he's a good development driver and can give very accurate feedback. It was just back then, he (or McMerc) had always been plagued by unreliability. IMO, if he was still working for that team today he'd have won the championship last year by a considerable spread.

Maybe that is because they can compare them to Michael?
In any way during tests it always seemed as Kimi wasn't working at 100% - he rarely topped time shits.

[The FOZ]

Maybe they're making Kimi a test driver? That would avoid having to buy out his contract, and make room for another race driver...

[megz]

^ Most ridiculous suggestion yet.

[The FOZ]

^ Most ridiculous suggestion yet.

Would you prefer I post lols and repeat back what everyone's already said?