He is the driver Red Bull backed instead of Kimi Raikkonen but failed to score a point during his Formula 1 career

Follow us on Google Discover

Kimi Raikkonen is renowned for being a legend of Formula 1 and claimed his only title with Ferrari during the 2007 season.

In fact, to this day, he’s the last driver to have claimed a title for the Scuderia in Formula 1, and he achieved it nearly 20 years ago.

Raikkonen drove for four teams during his career, and it all began with Sauber back in 2001, when he was still considered to be a very raw prospect.

One promising season, where he finished 10th in the drivers’ championship was all that was required to earn a promotion to McLaren, where he turned into a perennial victor.

Raikkonen once left McLaren’s Ron Dennis in tears after an incredible comeback at the Japanese Grand Prix, which included a last-lap overtake for the win.

In fact, before making his debut, Raikkonen managed to frighten Sauber by falling asleep just before the race. He was just that relaxed.

READ MORE: McLaren were once accused of stopping ‘incredible’ 21-win driver becoming the youngest champion in Formula 1 history

Red Bull once backed pointless F1 driver Enrique Bernoldi over Kimi Raikkonen

Raikkonen’s ascension through the junior categories helped him to land a big gig with Sauber for 2001 because they had seen how much promise he had in testing.

It meant that Sauber test driver Enrique Bernoldi, who had been patiently waiting for an opportunity, was snubbed, despite Red Bull (the team’s sponsor at the time) preferring him over Raikkonen.

Bernoldi was a 23-year-old at the time who had spent time in Formula 3000, but didn’t have too much success to show for his efforts. His best finish in the championship was 16th (over two full seasons in what is now considered to be Formula 2).

He’s one of the first examples of a Red Bull junior team product, and sadly for them, he’s far from their most impressive.

Sauber correctly called who would be better between Bernoldi and Raikkonen, which caused a ‘disagreement’ back in 2001, according to Beat Zehnder.

“Maybe I’m overdoing it a little bit, but Toto [Wolff] is here because of Peter. Peter brought Mercedes back into international racing, because they stopped for 30-odd years after the 1955 Le Mans accident,” he told Motorsport.com.

“Red Bull and Petronas were on our car in ’95. With Red Bull, we had a disagreement over a driver. Dr Helmut Marko was pushing for Enrique Bernoldi and out of the blue Kimi Raikkonen came up, so there we split apart.

“But we also had Credit Suisse, BMW… without Peter and the way he presented the team we would have folded a long time ago.”

READ MORE: The origins of Kimi Raikkonen’s infamous nickname that took Ron Dennis ‘a lot of time’ to create

What happened to Enrique Bernoldi after he missed out on a drive with Sauber?

Bernoldi would go on to sign a three-year deal (one with the option for two more) with the Arrows team for 2001.

Sadly, in 28 races, he would fail to achieve one point with them and scored a best finish of eighth. In 2002, they hit financial trouble and failed to make the end of the season, folding with multiple races to go.

Between 2004 and 2006, Bernoldi would be BAR and Honda’s test driver, while continuing to race in stock car championships.

He returned to single-seaters in 2008 with IndyCar, but that didn’t last long before he ended up in stock cars again.

His full-time racing career came to an end in 2012 at the age of just 34, and it’s not known what he is currently up to.