Ferrari eye return to glory days with Raikkonen

Kimi Raikkonen will return to Ferrari next season on a two-year deal, five years after he was dropped by the Italian outfit. The 33-year-old Finn, Brazilian Felipe Massa’s replacement, will partner Fernando Alonso, the driver who replaced him in 2010.

The announcement brings an end to Raikkonen’s association with Lotus, with which he returned to Formula One last year following a two-year absence from the sport.

The Alonso-Raikkonen pairing is perhaps the strongest driver line-up, not just for Ferrari, but also for Formula One in recent years. Both are former world champions, are supremely quick, and experienced enough to see beyond the usual mind games. But can they bring the glory days back for Ferrari, winner of a record 16 constructors’ and 15 drivers’ titles but without a title since 2008?

It might look like a win-win situation for a Ferrari fan, but skeptics doubt if the two can complement each other, knowing their altogether different persona, like fire and ice.

“I don’t think Alonso will be too pleased to see Raikkonen there,” commented former racer and Sky television commentator Martin Brundle. “He (Raikkonen) will go about it in his own way. If he heard a radio message ‘Fernando is faster than you’, Kimi is not going to move out of the way. He’s going to radio back and say ‘So why is he behind me, then, if he’s faster than me?”

In fact, Alonso has many times in the recent past voiced his preference for Massa to be retained in the team. The Spaniard is known to demand preferential treatment, like in 2007 when he was teamed with Lewis Hamilton at McLaren.

Both Alonso and Raikkonen are top-drawer drivers and there are going to be days when one will be ahead of the other. It, therefore, remains to be seen if this pairing can blaze Ferrari’s trail to title glory or will derail itself in a shower of sparks along the way.

Tough days ahead for Bach

The coming months are going to be tough for new Olympic supremo Thomas Bach. With the Winter Olympics in Sochi just five months away, he first has to deal with human rights issues such as Russia’s controversial anti-gay laws. And then, he has to address the construction delays that have bogged down the preparations of 2016 Olympics hosts Rio de Janeiro.

Bach’s predecessor, former Belgian Olympic yachtsman Jacques Rogge, steered the International Olympic Committee admirably during his  12-year tenure. He brought stability back to the IOC after the Salt Lake City bribes-for-votes scandal, stepped up the fight against doping and match-fixing, and conceptualized the Youth Olympics.

Bach will have to continue this work and at the same time further oversee the reform of the Olympic programme, which will see golf and rugby sevens from 2016 on. And he has to look beyond too, particularly the tsunami-struck nuclear plant of Fukushima which lies some 250 kilometres north of Tokyo, which will host the 2020 Games.