A man of very few words, Kimi Raikkonen does all his talking on the track. While most drivers would give their left foot to drive for Ferrari, Kimi Raikkonen blatantly turned them down after being offered a seat alongside Michael Schumacher in only his first year competing in the sport. He wanted to race for Ferrari; he just wanted it on his own terms, and not as a number two driver.

Fast forward six years. Kimi Raikkonen is not just driving for Ferrari, but at 51 million dollars a year, he is also the sport’s highest paid driver, and as we all know, delivered the scarlet red team their first driver’s championship since losing their star driver last season. This makes him the first driver outside of Schumacher to win a driver’s championship for Ferrari since 1979. All this in his first year.

After a string of near misses, the Iceman, as he is known by his fans, was dangerously close to becoming the greatest driver to never win a driver’s championship. He was plagued by reliability problems and bad luck. It looked as if the Formula One Gods had conspired against him, snatching victories and pole positions on the last possible seconds, but there were also times when Kimi drove faster than his demons could fly.

In 2003, Kimi drove a brilliant race from 7th on the grid and won his first Grand Prix in Interlagos, Brazil, only for it to be stripped off him one week later when new evidence emerged that the race stewards had actually miscounted the amount of laps completed once they red-flagged the incident-filled, rain-soaked, Grand Prix. After a messy appeal from Jordan, the race win was eventually handed to Giancarlo Fisichella.

Later that season, Kimi managed to bring his fast but fragile Mclaren all the way up to the final race as a championship contender in Suzuka back in 2003 but narrowly missed out on the championship after Michael Schumacher bounced back to seventh place to win his sixth driver’s title. Kimi finished second. Again.

The following seasons would be filled with more would haves, could haves and should haves than any human being was ever designed to take. In the Nurburgring, back in 2005, Kimi was on his way to victory when his suspension gave way on the final lap; a driveshaft failure in Imola the same year snatched another victory; hydraulics failure in Germany put a damper on yet another race win. The pattern was becoming painfully familiar, but Kimi never, ever gave up and didn’t just win in the ultimate driver’s circuit in Belgium, but also took the win in the penultimate round in Suzuka after starting from dead last on the grid.

While most drivers would crumble under half the pressure, Kimi Raikkonen never stopped fighting. Heading into the last two races of the 2007 season, the flying Finn was completely written off after trailing 17 points behind championship leader, Lewis Hamilton. Only once in Grand Prix history has the driver laying third in the championship heading into the last race of the season emerged as the champion. The only other driver to come from the back was Giuseppe Farina in 1950 during the first ever season of Formula One.

After a flawless race in a track that robbed him of his first short-lived race win, the 28 year old man from Espoo, Finland, pulled out some of the fastest laps of his career, forcing Jean Todt’s pacemaker into overdrive and bringing the bookies to their knees. Kimi Raikkonen finally achieved what many felt had been long overdue: his first driver’s championship. Proving beyond his minimal words that his time had finally come.