For the penultimate race on this year's long F1 calendar, this weekend will see the F1 paddock touch down in Brazil, at the Autodromo José Carlos Pace, in a suburb of Sao Paulo. Along with Austin, Singapore and Abu Dhabi, it is one of the few circuits that runs anti-clockwise and holds a lot of sentiment for the majority of the teams and drivers.
Birthplace to the legendary Ayrton Senna, who passed away 22 years ago at the San Marino Grand Prix, drivers and teams alike are reminded of the legend every time the F1 circus arrives in town. It is the race all Brazilians want to win, but rarely do, Felipe Massa being the only one to clock up a victory here when he was driving for Ferrari.
For Kimi Raikkonen, a current Ferrari driver, the home race effect may not be in operation this weekend, but the Finnish driver has his own fond memories, as it was here that he secured the world championship for the Maranello outfit back in the 2007 season.
“It's a good place to go,” he said. “It's a different and “old”, traditional circuit. It's about short laps and not so many corners, but it's hard to make a very good lap time and the grid is always very tight there. To lose one tenth means losing a lot of places.”
“Also, there aren't so many circuits going in an anti-clockwise direction, so it's always different. Obviously it has been resurfaced many times, and it always goes very well at first. But then year by year it becomes more and more bumpy and it makes it more difficult. They changed the kerbs a bit, so the flow of the circuit also changed a bit. However, it's one of those circuits where it's difficult to go fast even if it might not be so tricky to drive.”
The 2016 Brazilian Grand Prix will be Kimi's 13th race weekend at Interlagos and hopefully that number will only bring him good luck, not the bad that is normally associated with it.
