Bahrain ended Kimi Raikkonen’s long wait for a podium

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On 19 April 2015, Kimi Raikkonen finished second in the Bahrain Grand Prix and finally put an awkward little statistic in the bin. After 27 races without a podium, the Ferrari driver was back in the top three for the first time since returning to Maranello.

Raikkonen’s second spell at Ferrari had not started especially smoothly. He returned in 2014 to a team that was no longer the one he had left, and the results had been thinner than expected. There were flashes, but not many afternoons that felt properly Kimi. Bahrain in 2015 was different. It was not a win, but it was a performance that looked much more like him: calm, sharp and increasingly quick as the race unfolded.

Kimi-Matias Räikkönen

• Races (starts):350
• Wins:21
• Podiums:103
• Pole positions:18
• Fastest laps:46
• Driver of the Day:5
• World titles:1
• Points (total):1873

Data source: F1DB (GitHub)

The race itself was won by Lewis Hamilton, but Raikkonen’s late surge gave the finish its shape. Ferrari altered strategy mid-race, and on fresher tyres he closed rapidly on Nico Rosberg in the final laps. Rosberg ran deep at Turn 1 with three laps to go, Raikkonen took second, and suddenly a long dry spell was over under the Sakhir floodlights.

Formula 1’s official post-race stats noted that the podium ended the longest podium-free run of Raikkonen’s career at 27 races. It was also his first podium since the 2013 Korean Grand Prix, and his first since rejoining Ferrari for the 2014 season. For a driver with Raikkonen’s reputation, that had become quite a wait.

There was something very on-brand about the way he did it too. This was not a chaotic race inherited through luck or attrition alone. Raikkonen built it patiently. He was fourth on the grid, ran in the leading group, and then came alive in the closing phase when the tyre offset began to matter. By the finish he had split the two Mercedes, which, in 2015, counted as a respectable bit of work.

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The podium also helped give a clearer outline to Ferrari’s early-season revival. Sebastian Vettel had already won in Malaysia a few weeks earlier, but Bahrain gave the team another useful sign that it had more than one functioning weapon. Raikkonen had spent much of 2014 looking slightly out of sync with the machinery underneath him. In Bahrain, he looked far more comfortable, and Ferrari looked stronger for it.

19 April 2015 stands as one of those results that was worth a little more than the number beside it. Raikkonen did not win the Bahrain Grand Prix, but second place ended a long podium drought, gave him his first top-three finish of his Ferrari return, and restored a more familiar shape to his story. In a career that rarely bothered with sentimental speeches, Sakhir delivered something simpler: Kimi back where you expected to find him.

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