Kimi Raikkonen doesn’t do hype. He never has. Which is why his blunt assessment of Max Verstappen carries a bit more weight than the usual paddock chorus.
Asked to name the best driver on the current Formula 1 grid, the 2007 world champion didn’t hesitate: Verstappen. No caveats, no polite nods elsewhere. Just a matter-of-fact verdict from a man who built a career on saying less than everyone around him.
Raikkonen’s reference point wasn’t some abstract idea of “greatness”, either. He went straight back to the day Verstappen announced himself properly — Barcelona 2016, first race in the senior Red Bull team, and a win that looked equal parts audacity and inevitability. Raikkonen was right there in the Ferrari, chasing him home.
“He won his first race in Spain right in front of me, ten years ago,” Raikkonen said in an interview with Quotidiano Sportivo. “That’s when I realised a star was born.”
It’s an interesting choice of words from Raikkonen, because the ‘star’ bit is obvious in hindsight, but the “born” part is what matters. Verstappen didn’t gradually become the sport’s defining driver; he arrived with the sharp edges already in place. The aggression was there, the racecraft was there, and crucially, the composure under pressure was there long before the numbers on his CV started to look ridiculous.
Those numbers are now the kind that change how the grid talks about you. Verstappen has four world championships. He missed a fifth by two points, and still ended up being voted best driver of 2025 by both his fellow drivers and the team bosses — a neat indicator that whatever the noise outside the bubble, inside F1 the respect is close to universal.
Raikkonen’s perspective is also coloured by the fact he’s seen multiple “next big things” up close, across eras that didn’t always play nicely with each other. He made his debut against Michael Schumacher’s Ferrari peak, raced through the rise of Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton, and stuck around long enough to watch Verstappen take the sport into its current phase. The through-line in all of that is that truly special drivers don’t need ideal circumstances to look special.
What’s also woven into Raikkonen’s Verstappen praise is a small, revealing aside about Ferrari — and maybe a little bit of unfinished business.
Raikkonen remains Ferrari’s most recent drivers’ champion, a trivia stat that becomes more awkward with every passing season. He left the team at the end of 2018, and he admits he hoped the Scuderia would quickly find “my successor in the championship roll of honour”.
“It hasn’t happened yet,” Raikkonen said. “But from a distance I can see encouraging signs.”
That line lands differently in 2026, because Ferrari’s driver line-up and ambitions are about as loaded as they’ve been in years. Hamilton is now in red and chasing a record eighth title. Charles Leclerc is still the homegrown standard-bearer with the same mission he’s had for most of his career: bring the championship back to Maranello and end the long wait.
The early shape of 2026, though, hasn’t been written around Ferrari. Mercedes has come out of the gates as the leading force, setting the competitive tempo at the start of this season. Even so, Hamilton has already delivered Ferrari’s best result so far with second place in Canada — a detail that matters because it shows Ferrari isn’t simply watching from the sidelines, even if it’s not dictating terms yet.
All of which makes Raikkonen’s Verstappen praise feel less like nostalgia and more like a benchmark being set. Verstappen is the reference. If you want the title in 2026, you’re going through him — whether the car is the class of the field or not. That’s what happens when a driver’s baseline is so high that even a season without the crown still ends with the paddock voting him No.1.
It’s also hard to ignore the symmetry Raikkonen’s comments accidentally underline. His final F1 appearance came at Abu Dhabi 2021, the same race that became part of modern F1 folklore when Verstappen won his first world championship and ended Hamilton’s run in the process. Raikkonen exited the stage as the sport pivoted to Verstappen’s era, and now — years later — he’s effectively putting a stamp on it: this is still the guy.
Raikkonen, as ever, didn’t dress it up. He didn’t need to. In a paddock full of carefully managed soundbites, sometimes the cleanest take is the one delivered with the fewest words. And on Verstappen, Raikkonen’s message is as simple as it is telling: phenomenal then, and still the best now.
