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Raikkonen explains why he ‘just picked up’ 7

For some drivers their permanent F1 racing number has sentimental value but not for one driver, Kimi Raikkonen.

The Finn, who kicks off his 19th F1 campaign in Bahrain this weekend, races with the number 7 on his Alfa Romeo C41.

But while that is a lucky number for many, for Raikkonen it is just a number.

“It was just we had to pick a number and I just picked up that,” he simply said.

“There was a chance that I’d take 6 because I won the championship with it but I knew that [Nico] Rosberg wanted it because his father won the championship with it, so I just keep what I had.

“That was fine for me.”

Kimi Explains Why He Race With Number 7!

“We had to pick a number and I pick up that.”😂

Never change Kimi, never change!#F1 #BahrainGP pic.twitter.com/tIBu1ElFxb

— Eau rouge (@Insidef1) March 25, 2021

Permanent numbers have been a part of Formula 1 since 2014.

Asked back then why he had chosen 7, Raikkonen said: “It’s the number I already had last year and I saw no reason to change it.”

Raikkonen raced the number 7 in 2013, the final season in which teams were allocated numbers according to their final position in the previous year’s Constructors’ Championship.

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Former F1 driver turned commentator Martin Brundle recently brought drivers’ numbers into the headlines when he labelled Mick Schumacher’s 47 “ugly”.

The Brit said: “Mick Schumacher has had to take an ugly number. All of the best numbers are taken.

“It doesn’t feel like a Formula 1 number.”

Schumacher, who will make his F1 debut with Haas this season, explained his choice, revealing he wanted ‘4’ or ‘7’ but both were taken.

“And then I was thinking, why not combine them?” he told Sky Italia. “So at first I was like, okay, maybe 74, but then I was like maybe not, and then we kind of came up with 47, which is the same and has so many coincidences which were just too big to oversee.

“If you take all the birthdays of my family, that equals 47. If you think that 4 and 7 are both the numbers that I wanted, so it’s great to have them like this.

“Some fans actually said 4 and 7, as in ‘For Michael’, which is also very nice and great to have and great to be able to drive, and therefore we chose number 47.”

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Source: Planetf1.com

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