Grosjean and Massa do not distinguish between Alonso and Räikkönen

Few men have had the chance or misfortune, depending on how you see it, to be teammates with two of the most remarkable drivers of their generation, Fernando Alonso and Kimi Räikkönen, who will team up this season at Ferrari. In this very exclusive circle is Romain Grosjean, who had the opportunity to race the last seven races of the 2009 season alongside the Spaniard and almost the entire 2012 and 2013 seasons as the Finnish driver’s teammate.

When interviewed by the Brazilian site TotalRace, the Franco-Swiss mainly points out the similarities between the two world champions: « Good luck to them! They are two strong personalities. It will be interesting. Kimi is very similar to Fernando in many aspects. Both like to be number 1, so we will see what happens. »

From these two different experiences – in 2009, the Renault was not capable of doing better than scoring points, while in 2012 and 2013, the Lotus could regularly compete for the podium – he mainly remembers Räikkönen’s and Alonso’s determination: « If there’s something I could learn from Kimi and Fernando, it’s that they never give up. As soon as they are in the car, they get 100% out of it, whether it’s a good or bad car, whether the track is dry or wet. »

If Grosjean sends both drivers back-to-back, on Felipe Massa’s side – who had the opportunity to team up with Räikkönen between 2007 and 2009 and with Alonso between 2010 and 2013, each time at Ferrari – it’s mainly the qualities of the 2005 and 2006 world champion that are highlighted: « He knows what he needs to do to be fast right from the start. He combines talent with intelligence. He is really smart and that’s what you need for such drastic rule changes. »

Despite everything, the Williams driver believes that the Ferrari F14-T could allow Kimi Räikkönen to fully express himself: Maybe the new Ferrari will be better suited to Kimi’s driving style. We will see, he stated to our German colleagues at Speed Week.

Fernando Alonso, in an interview for the Gazzetta dello Sport last week, indicated that the work this season would be done in good harmony: « With Kimi, we spent a few days together in Maranello for promotional operations. It was half work and half pleasure, but now, we will have to work even more. Every evening, we have a report on every lap done by Kimi in the first two days and on every lap I did during the other days. We work together, as we have always done over these four years at Ferrari. » Statements to be read in full in this article.