Kimi Raikkonen might be known as the Iceman, but his cool evaporated pretty early on during the Saturday Top Gear 300, his introduction to the
NASCAR Nationwide Series.
The Finn seemed to particularly struggle with the heat and humidity of the afternoon heat in Charlotte, asking repeatedly for additional water bottles to be handed to him at pit stops and at one point sounding almost on the verge of panic when a full bottle didn't materialise before he had to leave his pit box.
"I need my drinking bottle," he radioed at one stop, then realised he had to crank up the demands to get some attention from the pit crew busy carrying out their pre-drilled roles. Soon after returning to the track, he was back on the radio: "I'm out of the drink again. I don't know. It's so small. I'm out again. [You have] to make sure it's completely full, because it is too small."
It didn't help when a fumble at the pit stop meant Raikkonen got back a mostly-empty water bottle instead of a refilled one during the stop under yellow on lap 74.
The situation wasn't improved by the heat pouring through the floor of the #87, a typical 'feature' of Nationwide cars. Raikkonen's boots were from his F1 and WRC days, after Kimi had opted not to fit the heavy duty heat shields that experienced
NASCAR drivers know to put in as he hadn't found the heat an issue during last week's Truck Series race.
He radioed his crew to say that his feet were "burning" and at one point suggested in frustration that "maybe I put my foot out the window" to cool it down. Finally he settled on "[I'll] just try to keep my foot off the floor and hold them up."
Not that you'd have heard many of his comments about the heat or the water situation on the telecast, since his language was - let's just say, free-flowing. "My leg are burning inside the cockpit because it's so f***ing hot!" was an early sample.
And the F-word was much in evidence when describing how his car was handling as the race wore on, saying that he was having real trouble turning it through the corner. "You have to make the car better. It's unbelievable how bad it is," he said - rather missing the point that in NASCAR, the pit crew needs accurate feedback and instructions from the driver to know how to proceed, unlike the telemetry-driven world of F1 where the engineers have an answer for the driver before he ever gets back into the pits.
For all the complaints and issues - which were pretty standard
NASCAR fare really, as anyone who has ever listened to Kyle Busch rampage about his car during a race on his way to another win will know - Raikkonen was actually doing rather well, circulating in a stable 15-20th position on the lead lap