Raikkonen Wins the F1 World Championship!

All of the king's horses and all the king's men, couldn’t stop Kimi Raikkonen from Winning the 2007 Brazilian Grand Prix and being World Champion.

It has been a dramatic season for the Formula One Grand Prix, and even more so for the Finnish driver, because he has seemingly achieved what looked utterly impossible – triumphing a seven point deficit over the leading championship man, 22-year old McLaren Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton, who unfortunately, suffered from electronic problems with his MP4-22 race car.

The start of the 71-lap race saw pole position Felipe Massa getting into the lead with Raikkonen making a good getaway, slotting into second as it almost looked like a brilliant blocking tactic from teammate Massa. Lewis Hamilton was dropped from second to fourth, after which he ran off the track, losing another two precious positions.
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Against all odds, the championship race for him was very much alive, until lap seven, when Hamilton dramatically dropped from sixth position to a dreary 18th after a massive, temporary slowdown with his car. While he was able to reset the electronic systems and get back into the race, his dreams of winning the World Championship Title were in shreds.

On the contrary, the two scarlet Ferraris of Raikkonen and Massa were in the lead, with the latter trailing closely but contentedly behind his team-mate. By this time, they had opened up an incredible 24+ seconds lead over 3rd place Alonso Fernando.

The turning point for the Finn came during the second round of pit stops, where he hammered out three to four blinding laps, putting some distance between himself and Massa, just before coming in.

What good timing then, as Raikkonen emerged just ahead of Massa with the entire Brazilian crowd moaning and groaning in displeasure, to take the lead of the race, all the way to the end.

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All this while, more drama had been occurring as Kazuki Nakajima's Toyota entered the pits and had accidentally hit one of their pit crew, sending him to the floor momentarily, and tripping another team mate.

Fortunately, for both Nakajima and the crew member, the rest of the team reacted swiftly to complete his pit stop, with the slightly injured man hopping away on one leg after heroically recovering to replace the tyres on the car.

Raikkonen took the championship title home, just over a second faster from 2006 race winner Massa with a total of 110 championship points on the board, just one point more than 2nd place Hamilton, who blazed impressively back to seventh position on the track.

Third place of the driver championships Alonso was tied to Hamilton with the final points standings at 109, as well as first place finishes throughout the season. But with Hamilton’s greater number of second place podium finishes during the 2007 season, he was able to move up officially to second place of the 2007 Formula One World Championships.

"I always believed we could recover from our poor results and do a better job than our rivals," Raikkonen said. "So I never gave up and it was a great result for me and the team.

"I wasn't really 100 per cent sure of what was happening at the end as we were still waiting for still to finish - I had to wait a long time to hear that I had finally won it. I waited and waited. It was amazing for me that after all the last races we have had such a good finish to the season and I am very happy now."

Credits: nikolaiski