Friday, June 10, 2011

Kimi Raikkonen has tough day in Nationwide debut

Saturday's Nationwide race at Charlotte Motor Speedway for Kimi Raikkonen was quite the contrast to his Camping World Truck Series debut just a week earlier.

Raikkonen ran (relatively) well that race and finished a respectable 13th. In Saturday's Nationwide race? Well, it was almost a case of what could go wrong did go wrong as Raikkonen finished 27th, 4 laps off the pace.

The 2007 Formula 1 champion qualified 22nd and after maintaining his position for the first portion of the race, he started to complain about the handling of his car as he lost touch with the leaders.

Raikkonen hit the wall multiple times, got a penalty for being too fast on pit road (on his first green-flag NASCAR pit stop, nonetheless) and ran over Jeremy Clements' splitter on the backstretch after it fell off Clements' car. And there was also the issue of Raikkonen's feet being too hot and the team supplying him the proper water bottle during pit stops.

The jerky was definitely not perky.

Will this be Raikkonen's last race in NASCAR for a while, or will we see him in the Sprint Cup Series at Sonoma? It was originally estimated that Raikkonen would run between 3-5 races this season, but on Thursday Kyle Busch said that he had only been paid for two races -- Saturday's race and the Truck race. Raikkonen tested Robby Gordon's Sprint Cup car at Virginia International Raceway earlier in the week, but got off course and tore up the front end plowing into the grass, a la Carl Edwards at the All-Star race.

Marisa Tomei Shannyn Sossamon Rachael Leigh Cook Elisha Cuthbert Ciara

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