Romain Grosjean Reveals How Kimi Raikkonen Once ‘Shocked’ Him With a Heartening Gesture

Romain Grosjean had a premature exit from Formula 1 after his crash at the 2020 Bahrain GP. Recently, the former Lotus and Haas driver appeared as a guest on Nico Rosberg’s podcast. He gave some insights into his life after the accident and at the same time shared some light moments talking about his days in F1.

Grosjean teamed up with stalwarts of the game in his career spanning over ten years. He was teammates with former world champion Kimi Raikkonen for the Lotus team for two seasons in 2012-13. He shared a beautiful gesture by the Finn back in the days which took him by surprise.

Romain Grosjean could not think of an answer

During the course of this 45-min interview, Rosberg asked him who is the faster driver between Alonso and Raikkonen. Notably, Grosjean has been teammates with both of these legendary drivers; he gave a rather diplomatic answer to that question. “I think the faster would be Alonso over one lap, but over a race distance, Kimi would always find a solution to go fast.”

Following up on that, when the former Silver Arrows driver asked him to share a funny moment with Kimi, he certainly had a direct answer to that. He told that although the two were teammates, Kimi never spoke too much around owing to his nature. But he went on to tell about a beautiful gesture by Kimi.

“I remember when we were at Spa, in the truck, he comes to me and says, ‘Congratulations on the birth of your son’. I was shocked because we never spoke and out of the blue he just knew I had a baby. I didn’t know what to say.”

Kimi’s first message to Grosjean

In his racing career spanning over ten years, Grosjean had the opportunity to work alongside many incredible drivers. However, he recalls his first conversation with Kimi Raikkonen with great joy. He says that the conversation was open and straight to the point.

He told that he got a message from Kimi after he got confirmed for the seat. “And the text message was: ‘Happy for you, let’s have no BS between us, see you soon,” said former F1 driver as reported by PlanetF1

“His conversation was definitely the opposite of his career: short!” he added jokingly.

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