Arguably more than any other driver, Kimi Raikkonen has a penchant for breaking with convention and forging his own path. The Finnish driver started out in F1 amid protests over his relative lack of experience – having contested fewer than a dozen professional lower-level races in his career – and finished 10th in his debut championship.
The next season, he was driving for McLaren, the season after that he won his first grand prix, and within just a few years was crowned world champion for Ferrari. And when that got boring, he made an unprecedented moved to the World Rally Championship. But that’s apparently wearing thin on a driver not known for sitting still, so off he goes to NASCAR.
We first broke the news of Kimi’s plans back in March, and a few days later already had confirmation of his contract with Kyle Busch Motorsports (KBM) to debut in the Camping World Truck Series – the entry point into NASCAR racing. Now he’s set to make his oval-track debut this weekend at Charlotte Motor Speedway, and this is the truck he’ll be driving.
The No. 15 Toyota Tundra is being fielded by KBM for Kimi’s ICE1RACING team, and features sponsorship from – wait for it – Perky Jerky. The dried meat snack packs guarana (a plant with twice the caffeine of coffee) and was apparently invented when some guys spilled energy drink on their beef jerky while trapped on a ski lift. (Seriously, we couldn’t make this stuff up.) Today it’s the “official jerky of the Daytona 500”, and should go down well with the Red Bull sponsorship on the Citroën DS3 which Raikkonen drives in the WRC.
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