‘Clusterf**k’ – Ferrari insider finally lifts lid on famous Kimi Raikkonen pit stop blunder

Kimi Raikkonen was once put on full wet tyres on a completely dry track during the 2009 Malaysian Grand Prix – and a former Ferrari insider has revealed how this classic blunder actually unfolded.

Ferrari was attempting to time a pitstop perfectly to switch Raikkonen onto wet tyres, but it completely backfired when the rain failed to arrive at the right moment.

Kimi Raikkonen’s Ferrari wet tyre mistake explained

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Rob Smedley is no longer directly involved in Formula 1, but was once one of the most popular figures amongst fans of the sport due to his no-nonsense approach to team radio communication with long-serving driver Felipe Massa.

One of these most famous radio communications came at the 2009 Malaysian Grand Prix, when Massa requested, with urgency, a white (clear) visor for his helmet, in order to help with visibility.

The near-desperation in his voice led Smedley to reply with the oft-quoted, “Felipe baby, stay cool, we’re bringing you the white visor,” placating the Brazilian.

This radio exchange took place during a long interlude mid-race, when the Sepang Circuit was hit by a monsoon that meant the conditions became too treacherous to race in. The race ultimately never resumed, as low light conditions meant an opportunity to keep going never arose.

But earlier in the race, Ferrari had made an enormous blunder with Kimi Raikkonen’s car, with the Italian squad trying to be clever with the Finn’s first pit stop.

That year, Raikkonen’s race engineer was now-McLaren boss Andrea Stella, while chief track engineer was Chris Dyer.

The clouds had darkened the skies overhead, with the rainstorm clearly set to hit by the time Lap 18 rolled around.

In the days of refuelling, the teams were compromised on strategy choices by the level of fuel they had started the race with, meaning that Raikkonen’s imminent stop couldn’t be delayed much longer, in order to respond to the rain.

Instead, the opportunity to time this stop with the imminent rain proved irresistible for Ferrari, which switched Raikkonen onto monsoon [extreme wet] tyres, sending him back out again – onto a completely dry track, with the rain gods having teased Ferrari into making a jaw-dropping error.

“Well, not to throw my ex-colleagues under the bus, but I didn’t work on that car!” Smedley told Jake Humphrey and Otmar Szafnauer on the High Performance Podcast, when asked about the gaffe.

Having been asked by a listener to explain how it was that Ferrari made the choice to put a car on wet tyres on a dry track, Smedley laughed as he recounted watching on as the other side of the Ferrari pitwall descended into chaos.

“So it was in anticipation of the monsoon,” he said.

“I think all of us, some of us much sooner after the event, some of us much later after the event, after a while, it became quite a point of hilarity within the team.

“So basically, it went like this. I think I’m right in saying that Michael [Schumacher] was there, but maybe not. I might have got that bit wrong. Anyway, Michael Schumacher was standing on the pit wall. He was there a lot.

“We were coming up to the pit stop. Kimi was coming up to the pit stop, and it was an obligatory pit stop. So he was ready to change tyres. And, as Kimi’s coming in, I’m listening at the other end of the pit wall.

“It was Chris and Andrea talking away. At one point, they said, ‘Oh, it’s starting to spit, right?’

“So I looked and I thought, ‘Oh yeah, it’s starting to spit’. And they said, “Oh, let’s get on the wet tyre, right?’

“But then they didn’t go on the wet tyre; they went on the monsoon tyre! So I’m listening at the other end of the pit wall, thinking, ‘This sounds like a clusterf**k!’

“So then I’m concentrating on my own stuff, and I thought ‘No, they’re not going to do that!’

“Then I turned round, and they’re putting the wet tyres on his car, and I thought, ‘Oh…’

“I started to talk to the middle of the pitwall and said, ‘If you look at the radar, you can see a little bit of rain, but we can’t see any monsoon.’

“We could see a monsoon, but it’s 20 minutes away.”

Smedley, descending into laughter as he started to do an eerily accurate impression of Raikkonen’s inimitable mannerisms, revealed how the Finn’s race had been enlivened by the error.

“Kimi, as he’s exiting the pit lane, he’s gone, ‘What the f**k?’

“So he goes out, and Andrea Stella, who is his race engineer – I’m not even sure that he was part of the decision, I think he was just told what to do – Andrea is trying to do this job on him to keep him calm, saying, ‘Yeah, Kimi, we think that the rain’s coming. So just look after the tyres.’

“Kimi is mumbling, ‘F**king full wets’. So then he’s going round, and he keeps coming past. He’s losing literally like 10 seconds a lap. He passes once, and I’m like, ‘There’s a decision for you.’

“Passes the second time, and I’m like, ‘The f**k are we doing here? This is a joke!’

“We’ve now lost 20 seconds. We’ve lost a pit stop. And, on the third lap, I think it started to rain, but it started to spit properly. Andrea said to him, “Right, okay, Kimi, it’s come to us now. It’s come to us, and it started to rain.’

But the chance to look like geniuses had passed, with Ferrari’s pit-stop having been about three laps too early: driving slowly around on monsoon tyres on a dry track had destroyed them, meaning that the Finn needed to pit again from last position when the rain started to fall properly.

“Kimi goes, ‘Yeah, now the tyres are completely fucked, and I need to pit!’

“So then they brought him in and put inters on!”

Raikkonen was classified as the last-placed driver to finish, in 14th, over two minutes behind the race winner Jenson Button.

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