Kimi Raikkonen says he wants to run a Sprint Cup Series race at a road course, having tested Robby Gordon's Cup car last Tuesday at Virginia International Raceway.
The 2007 F1 World Champion said he ran few laps in Gordon's car but his test was hampered by an early off that damaged the nose of the car and then rain in the afternoon. Despite his short experience, The Finn said he enjoyed the test, which came just a few days after his NASCAR debut in the Camping World Truck Series at Charlotte, where he finished 15th.
"We had few issues in the test with the Cup car," said Raikkonen at Charlotte on Thursday. "We didn't do an awful lot of running in the morning and then in the afternoon we knew it was going to start raining. I went out and just ran a bit wide and decided to go over the grass but there was a big hole or something in the grass, so it destroyed the front a bit and then it started to rain anyhow. It was fun to drive it, the road course with that car."
Raikkonen was non-committal when asked if he will be running a Sprint Cup Series race soon, but said he wants to try it while showing a preference for doing so at a road course. On June 26, NASCAR's top series competes at Infineon Raceway in Sonoma, a date that doesn't clash with his World Rally Championship schedule, making it a likely choice for the Finn.
"We have all this in mind, to try to do it," said Raikkonen. "The other thing is it going to happen or not, I don't know. Of course, I'm probably more keen to do those road courses than anything else.
"I'll leave Saturday as soon as the race is over back to Europe. I have other things to do there, so after that I don't know when I will be back. After that I have a rally in Greece and then some other rallies at least before I'll be back."
Kyle Busch, who is fielding a car though NEMCO Motorsports for Raikkonen this weekend in the Finn's Nationwide Series debut at Charlotte, had initially spoken about running him in about three to five Truck Series events. However, he said Thursday that as of now, no further outings are planned, while joint plans for his Cup debut have not been discussed.
"We appreciate the guys from Kyle Busch Motorsports doing the building of the car and then for NEMCO Motorsports and them working on it here this week, along with us just trying to help them out in case there's any bugs," said Busch. "As far as the Sonoma race, we've had no discussions about Cup stuff at all. As far as I know, just this weekend is the last hurrah with Kimi unless he comes back and wants to do further races in NASCAR."
Busch added that there have been changes on his initial deal with Raikkonen.
"What's changed is the payment schedule," Busch said. "The contract states that we're supposed to receive so much and we have not. We've only received enough for these two races.
"It's either up to Kimi [Raikkonen] or up to the financial people who run Kimi's business side of things to decide that they need to find the sponsorship funds in order to carry the experience for him further."