Kimi Räikkönen

Kimi Räikkönen arrived in Formula 1 in 2001 with one of the thinnest résumés in the sport's history — just 23 car races before his Sauber debut — and a superlicence granted only after officials were persuaded he was an exception to every rule about experience. He answered the doubt on his first weekend, scoring points at the Australian Grand Prix, and within a year McLaren had signed him to replace Mika Häkkinen. The raw, almost eerie natural speed was obvious immediately; so was the indifference to everything around it that would make him the most distinctive personality of his generation.

The McLaren years from 2002 to 2006 should have brought a championship and, but for serial mechanical failures, probably would have. He lost the 2003 and 2005 titles as much to unreliability as to anyone's driving, and the 2005 season in particular — including a last-lap pass on Giancarlo Fisichella at Suzuka after starting seventeenth — established him as perhaps the fastest pure racer on the grid. When the wins came they were often spectacular, carved out from grid positions that should have made them impossible.

His world championship came in 2007, his first year at Ferrari, in the closest finish the sport had seen. Räikkönen trailed the two feuding McLarens of Hamilton and Alonso with two races to go and won both, taking the title at the final round in Brazil by a single point. It was a championship won on raw pace and ruthless execution at exactly the moment it was needed — the last Ferrari drivers' title for fifteen years, and the validation of a talent that had always deserved one.

After a sabbatical in rallying, Räikkönen returned in 2012 and reminded everyone he had lost nothing, winning in Abu Dhabi with the famous radio message telling his engineers to leave him alone. A second Ferrari spell and a long final chapter at Sauber and Alfa Romeo followed, where he became the most experienced driver in the sport's history. The deadpan one-liners turned him into a cult figure, but underneath the "Iceman" persona was one of the most naturally gifted drivers ever to sit in a Formula 1 car.