Background and career
Kimi-Matias Räikkönen (Finnish pronunciation: [ˈkimi ˈmɑtiɑs ˈræi̯kːønen]; born 17 October 1979) is a Finnish racing and rally driver who competed in Formula One between 2001 and 2021, and the World Rally Championship from 2009 to 2011. Nicknamed "the Iceman", Räikkönen won the Formula One World Drivers' Championship in 2007 with Ferrari, and won 21 Grands Prix across 19 seasons.
Born in Espoo, Räikkönen began competitive kart racing aged 10, winning several national titles before graduating to junior formulae in 1999. He dominated the 2000 British Formula Renault Championship with Manor, prompting Sauber to sign him in Formula One for 2001. Following several points finishes across his rookie season, he joined McLaren in 2002, achieving his maiden podium on debut. He achieved his maiden victory at the Malaysian Grand Prix in 2003, as he finished runner-up to Michael Schumacher. Reliability issues with the MP4-19 saw him drop to seventh the following year, taking a sole victory in Belgium. He won seven Grands Prix as he finished runner-up to Fernando Alonso in 2005. After a winless 2006 campaign, Räikkönen moved to Ferrari; he took six victories as he beat Alonso and Lewis Hamilton to the 2007 World Drivers' Championship by a single point. He finished third in 2008, with victories in Malaysia and Spain. Replaced by Alonso for 2010, Räikkönen left Formula One at the end of his 2009 campaign, where he won the Belgian Grand Prix.
Having debuted in rallying at the 2009 Rally Finland, Räikkönen signed with the Citroën Junior Team in the World Rally Championship for 2010; he took a stage win at the Rallye Deutschland. He continued in Citroën machinery as a privateer in 2011 under the ICE 1 Racing banner, finishing tenth overall in both seasons. Räikkönen returned to Formula One with Lotus in 2012 and 2013, scoring their only victories at the 2012 Abu Dhabi and 2013 Australian Grands Prix. He re-joined Ferrari for 2014 to partner Alonso, who departed for Sebastian Vettel in 2015, when Räikkönen took several podiums as he finished fourth in the standings. Further podiums followed in 2016 and 2017. In 2018—his last season with Ferrari—Räikkönen achieved his final career win at the United States Grand Prix, a record 114 races after his previous, and clinched third in the championship. He moved to Alfa Romeo in 2019, remaining with the team through 2020 and 2021 before retiring from Formula One.
Räikkönen achieved the third-most fastest laps (46), seventh-most podium finishes (103), and third-most race starts (349)—all records for a Finnish driver, alongside his 21 victories—in Formula One history, where he still holds several records. Since his retirement, he has made one-off appearances in the NASCAR Cup Series in 2022 and 2023, and has served as team principal of Kawasaki in the Motocross World Championship since 2022.
Kimi-Matias Räikkönen was born on 17 October 1979 in Espoo, Finland. He had success in karting from the age of ten. His first race outside Finland was in Monaco when he was 15 years old. During the race, the steering wheel broke, but he continued, informing his mechanic by frantically waving the steering wheel in the air on the home straight. Räikkönen's next Monaco race was also memorable; he was thrown on the wrong side of the safety fence in a collision but lifted his kart back onto the track and continued to race, finishing third. In 1998 he was first in the Nordic Championship at Varna in Norway. In 1999, Räikkönen placed second in a round of the European Formula Super A championship for the Dutch PDB Racing Team. He also competed in the Formula Ford Euro Cup. By the age of twenty, he had won the British Formula Renault winter series of 1999, winning the first four races of the year. In 2000, he won seven out of ten events in the Formula Renault UK Championship. Combined, over these two series of Formula Renault, he won 13 out of 23 events – a 57% win rate.
How Kimi Räikkönen makes money
Before the following Singapore Grand Prix, it was revealed that Räikkönen had not been paid salary by Lotus for the whole season, meaning there were several million euros of outstanding fees.
Sources
Net-worth figure: Celebrity Net Worth, in USD. Biography and career facts: the person's Wikipedia article and linked reporting. Snapshot date for all StarWorth figures: 28 October 2026.
