“S ometimes in Formula 1 there is politics, and the shit there is stupid,” Kimi Räikkönen says as we sit in the Lotus Formula 1 team’s hospitality tent, sheltered from the drizzle that hangs over most of the Canadian Grand Prix weekend. “I was pretty happy to go and do something else.”

The politics Räikkönen refers to involve his former employer, Ferrari, who wanted to force him out after a 2009 season in which he finished sixth in the drivers’ championship and was frequently accused of lacking motivation. It didn’t help matters that Räikkönen’s personal exploits had worn thin in Maranello.

“The Iceman”—he hails from Finland and drives with ice in his veins; the nickname was inevitable—has become famous for, as his team principal at Lotus, Eric Boullier, puts it, “doing pretty much whatever he wants.” That sort of attitude doesn’t fly with the Italians. The problem for the scuderia was that Räikkönen had a contract for 2010 (reported to be upward of $50 million) that would need to be bought out if he couldn’t find a subsequent ride in F1. He says he had “a few options from top teams,” but nothing materialized.

And so he happily went and did something else. The now 33-year-old driver spent two years in the World Rally Championship, running limited schedules with backing from Citroën and Red Bull, spending one season with the French marque’s junior team and another managing his own operation. His best finish was fifth in his debut season. Then in early 2011, it was announced he would compete in select rounds of NASCAR’s Camping World Truck Series with Kyle Busch Motorsports.

“I had no idea how it was going to be when I went to NASCAR,” Räikkönen says. “It looks very simple when you watch on TV. You think these cars are built in a shed behind some farm somewhere, but the cars are built very nicely. The finish is impressive when you look closely. It’s not so simple. There’s quite a lot of difference, and you have to have a lot of experience to get good at it.” Kimi competed in two races: one Truck Series event, where he finished 15th, and one Nationwide race, where he finished 27th.

“I really enjoyed the racing because it doesn’t matter if you’re first or 40th, you always find someone to race against,” he says. In addition to the wheel-to-wheel combat he craves, Räikkönen says he found the scene in the NASCAR paddock to be far mellower compared with the traveling circus that is Formula 1. He hopes to race here again one day.

His ability to jump from Formula 1 car to WRC racer to Truck Series ride to Nationwide stocker—oh, and we should mention he’s also raced powerboats (dressed as a gorilla), snowmobiles, motocross bikes, and probably dozens of other vehicles that few outside Räikkönen himself are aware of—is unique. The only men who come close to matching this Finn’s love of racing and his ability and willingness to pursue its wildly variant forms are IRL and NASCAR champion Tony Stewart and seven-time MotoGP world champion Valentino Rossi, both of whom have been known to crisscross the world of motorsports, often competing under pseudonyms.

Alan Permane, Lotus’s trackside operations director, has become intimately familiar with the intricacies of Räikkönen’s abilities in the year and a half the driver has spent with the team, based in Enstone, England. Despite the general consensus that Räikkönen simply has talent pouring out his ears, which allows him to jump from ride to ride and instantly go fast, Permane says there’s more to it than that.

“He’s very particular about how he likes his steering and the front of the car set up, and I think that allows him to feel very precisely what grip he’s got,” Permane says. “I suspect that allows him to jump between a Formula 1 car or a rally car or a snowmobile or a motocross bike or whatever he happens to be doing. It’s not just his talent for going quick. It’s his feeling for how much grip is available and what the tires are doing or whatever he’s driving is doing.”

“I cannot explain that I do this and that’s why it goes this way because I don’t think about that,” Räikkönen says, not the slightest bit amused by a question asking how it is, exactly, that he’s so unbelievably quick. “I just know that I want this kind of feeling, and if I get that, I know it’s going to be better.”

His interest level waxes and wanes depending on the subject matter, his gaze turning in a number of directions. Lotus says one of the things it has done to accommodate its lead driver is minimize the media commitments he seemingly loathes. “I think he genuinely doesn’t like talking in public, he genuinely doesn’t like talking to the press,” Permane says. “Maybe I’d go so far as to say he’s shy, honestly.”

Shyness or no, it’s not difficult to understand why Räikkönen would have a dim view of this aspect of the sport. Each afternoon of the race weekend, he takes a few minutes to answer questions from the media. The jostling begins the moment the team’s press officer gives the assembled crowd the green light. Middle-aged men, in the way that’s considered polite on continental Europe, elbow and shoulder one another in an effort to get their microphones closest to Räikkönen’s mouth—we imagine it’s a scene not unlike if Justin Bieber dropped by an all-girls boarding school. Räikkönen’s hands are planted firmly in his pockets, his eyes wandering even more than during our time together, and a smile doesn’t cross his face until the session is up and he can return to the team’s trailer. At the Canadian GP, a few journalists attempted to lob bonus questions while Räikkönen walked back to his cocoon, one even grabbing the man’s arm in an effort to get his attention.

“I don’t dislike [that side of the sport], but I want to be myself,” he says. “I think if you are happy with what you do, then you will do better. If you try to be something you’re not, then it will not work in the long run. I’m not here to try to please people. I’m here to do my best.”

Lotus understands that. Neither Räikkönen nor the team would disclose what is and isn’t permitted in his contract—rallying, motocross training, spelunking, etc.—but Boullier says, “He knows what he can do and what he cannot do. I know the things he’s doing, he’s doing very carefully. The rest is his private life, and if you’re famous, good-looking, and financially successful, you can enjoy your life.”

This has been the approach the team has taken in an effort to keep the Finn comfortable since he signed ahead of the 2012 season, even though Räikkönen broke his wrist racing a snowmobile before that year’s preseason testing had even begun. “Nothing is accepted if you get hurt, but you can get hurt falling off the stairs,” Räikkönen says. “I know that it’s risky, but if you only think you’re going to get hurt, then you cannot do anything.”

At this point in the 2013 season, much of the talk surrounding Räikkönen has focused on which team he’ll drive for next year: Lotus or Red Bull. Pundits have debated the relative merits of Red Bull’s wages and Lotus’s ability to shelter its superstar from the media, but that largely misses the point. Kimi Räikkönen is a racing driver, and if his stint with Ferrari has revealed anything about one of Formula 1’s greatest personalities, it’s that he’ll give a team everything he’s got to win a world championship—and then he’ll go do whatever he wants, whenever he wants. “I always said I’m here because I like the racing,” he says. “And the day I don’t enjoy it anymore, I will walk away.”

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io