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F1's Raikkonen to race for Sauber as Leclerc brings youth to Ferrari

Kimi Raikkonen will not be going out of Formula One at the top, or even with a top team. The announcement on Tuesday that the 2007 world champion is leaving Ferrari, the sport's oldest, most glamorous and successful team, at the end of the season was only to be expected. Less so was the subsequent revelation that the 38-year-old "Iceman" had agreed a two-year deal to continue with Ferrari-powered Sauber in a swap with that team's Monegasque rookie Charles Leclerc. That will close a circle at least, the Swiss team being the ones who gave Raikkonen his debut in 2001 despite the powers-that-be fearing he was too inexperienced. And it will keep the Finn racing on into his 40s. It will also please Formula One's owners, already facing the retirement of double world champion Fernando Alonso, by keeping one of the best known and most popular drivers on the starting grid. But the days when Raikkonen could hope for poles and wins, already scarce even at Ferrari where Sebastian Vettel is the main contender and team orders have been applied, are surely over now. Sauber was last in 2017 and is ninth of 10 teams now, even if the signs are more encouraging than they were, and there is a likelihood that Raikkonen will now be simply making up the numbers. The Finn will still relish racing with less media attention and more freedom, while for Ferrari there are also clear benefits. For the first time in four years, they now have a new benchmark for four-time champion Vettel and a (very) young driver who represents the future rather than the past. Vettel has outperformed Raikkonen consistently since the pairing started in 2015 with the German's move from Red Bull, and the Finn is already 62 points adrift this season with seven races remaining. Raikkonen has been more competitive this year, taking nine podium finishes and pole at Ferrari's home Italian Grand Prix with Formula One's fastest ever lap, but there are those who question whether Vettel is being pushed hard enough. Some even wonder just how quick the German really is. Ferrari will hope that 20-year-old Leclerc, unless told to adopt a subservient role, can apply a bit more pressure and help answer those questions. The gamble is that the youngster's relative inexperience could impact, in the short-term at least, Ferrari's constructors' championship hopes as he finds his way under considerable scrutiny.

Ferrari to be spun off from Fiat Chrysler

The recently merged Fiat Chrysler Automobiles empire has ambitious plans for growth, and it's going to need some big bucks in its coffers in order to enact them. Part of that cash injection is coming from the floating of its IPO on the New York Stock Exchange, but now FCA has announced a further capital campaign to be based on the enormous asset that is Ferrari.
FCA's board of directors has just approved the separation of Ferrari from the rest of the group as a separate entity. Once that separation is complete, Ferrari will put 10 percent of its shares on the stock market "in the United States and possibly a European exchange" as well.
This isn't the first time that the idea of a Ferrari IPO has been raised. Sergio Marchionne, chief executive of Chrysler, Fiat and Ferrari (pictured above), first raised the idea four years ago. Former Ferrari chairman Luca di Montezemolo nixed the idea, but now that he's been discharged, it appears there's nothing to get in the way of Marchionne's desires.

2015 Japanese Grand Prix is a little Mercedes, a lot of zen

Just one week on from the issues in Singapore Mercedes-AMG Petronas appeared to have solved its clamp problems and everything else. Daniil Kvyat at Infiniti Red Bull Racing took the two Free Practice scalps on Friday, but when it came time for qualifying the front of the grid looked really familiar: Mercedes' Nico Rosberg took his second pole position of the season, Lewis Hamilton next to him in second. Kvyat had a hand in that, too, the Russian getting into a big accident in Q3 when he put two wheels on the grass heading into the hairpin and veered into the tire wall so hard that he flipped. That ended qualifying before a number of drivers had a chance to improve their times, Hamilton among them. That's how Valtteri Bottas got in third for Willliams ahead of Sebastian Vettel fourth for Ferrari. Felipe Massa had the second Williams in fifth, ahead of Kimi Raikkonen in the second Ferrari. Daniel Ricciardo lined up sixth for Infiniti Red Bull Racing, a team we're going to have to enjoy watching for the rest of the season since it might not exist come 2016. Romain Grosjean gave Lotus some good news by getting into eighth, the team so strapped for cash that it couldn't get into its hospitality area, so it held press conferences outside and ate at Bernie Ecclestone's Paddock Club. Sergio Perez took ninth for Sahara Force India, and Kvyat slotted into tenth after not setting a time. The Russsian's race would begin from the pit lane once his mechanics rebuilt his car. It wouldn't be a Formula One start lately without someone at the front having clutch problems. This time it was pole man Rosberg, whose power unit got too hot and put him a few horsepower down on Hamilton through Turns 1 and 2. That's half of how Hamilton took the lead from the lights going out, and the Brit kept it throughout the race. Rosberg, however, said his race was lost when Hamilton pushed him wide through Turn 2, a move Hamilton defended. Rosberg finished almost 19 seconds behind his teammate, a gap that probably isn't fully explained by that opening incident. Hamilton's race was so uneventful that we almost never saw him on camera – that is, we saw him so much less than we usually see him when he's out in front and unpressured that Nikki Lauda said he'd ask Ecclestone why the cameras avoided him. The conspiracy theory holds that FOM was punishing Mercedes for not supplying Red Bull with engines next year.