© autosport

Willy Rampf, the former technical director of the Swiss Sauber F1 Team has praised Kimi Räikkönen as the best driver he has ever worked with.

For 2001, Nick Heidfeld was rescued from a potentially career-ending debut F1 season with Prost and both Peter Sauber and Willy Rampf decided to role the dice on an inexperienced, underqualified unknown. Following a remarkable performance in his maiden F1 test over four days at Mugello in September 2000, the team was about to unleash 21-year-old Kimi Raikkonen on F1.

"Kimi was a big risk," says Rampf. "But we came to the conclusions that he was the right man for us. We were amazed by his driving because he had no experience. At Mugello, I was there and Peter also came down. Kimi was given a laptime to achieve and after every day he had achieved it and we asked for a quicker laptime. Then we gave him new tyres and took out 40kg.

"He had never driven with no fuel, and the simulation said that he should be 1.2 seconds quicker. And he did the first lap exactly 1.2 seconds quicker. He didn't know where the braking points were, and he just had the out lap to get a feel for it but he was spot on with the simulation. This was astonishing.

"He was very confident. After the test, I told him that it was a good laptime but he could go quicker. He asked me if he should have gone quicker and I said 'that would have been good'. His response was 'if you had told me, I would have been quicker'. He wasn't joking – he was serious.

"From that test, I said to Peter that we had to take him. And it wasn't a huge risk because if he is that quick and talking like this he must be a big talent. And so it proved. Peter was happy and was also convinced that he had to be the driver.

"We expected that he would have some offs and make some mistakes, but it was not the case. Right from the start he was on a very high level. I would say that he was the best driver that I worked with and I still have the very highest respect for him."