Sebastian Vettel decided against Michael Schumacher and Lewis Hamilton when naming the most talented Formula 1 driver he ever raced against.
With 14 world titles split evenly between them, no-one can match Schumacher and Hamilton as the most decorated racer to ever grace the sport. But when asked who his greatest foe was, the retiring Vettel plumped for someone who only became champion once.
"I think Kimi [Raikkonen] is actually the biggest natural talent I've come across, ever – just in terms of raw speed, I think," the German told F1's Beyond the Grid podcast when looking back on his remarkable career.
"And it shows in the car, obviously, but it shows also in any other form of car. I think switching – if there was a discipline of switching cars every day – after 10 days he would be lapping everybody else, just because he's just a natural, it doesn’t take time to adapt to the car, to what the car requires.
"If you give him a steering wheel, he knows what to do with it. Sometimes you feel it's unfair, you need to get used to it first and get an idea of the track or the conditions, but for him it's just... boom."
Raikkonen became world champion for the first and only time in 2007, when he made the most of the squabble between McLaren team-mates Hamilton and Fernando Alonso to take home the trophy for Ferrari.
Vettel made his F1 debut that season, first deputising for the injured Robert Kubica at BMW Sauber before being released to replace Scott Speed at Toro Rosso. Soon after he became the main man in the sport, winning four titles on the bounce between 2010 and 2013 with Red Bull before later joining Ferrari, where he and Raikkonen would become team-mates for four seasons.
"I think with him, I probably had the best relationship out of all the team mates I had, because he was just so straightforward," recalled Vettel. "There was never an argument. If we crashed into each other we talked about it, fixed what happened, maybe laughed about it...
"But there was never a question that anything could sort of shake up or destabilise the, I don't want to say bond, but relationship that we had. He's been probably also the one when I came in, I remember, he was so respectful from the day I walked in, looking into my eyes. With other drivers I felt, 'okay I'm shaking hands, I'm saying hello, but actually the guy's not present, he's not here'. With people, I think Kimi has been exceptional."
