When Sebastian Vettel anointed 21x F1 race winner as 'the greatest natural racing talent' he'd ever seen

Former four-time F1 world champion Sebastian Vettel previously claimed that his former Ferrari teammate Kimi Raikkonen was "the greatest natural racing talent" that he had ever seen. The German driver represented for the Italian team for six years from 2015 to 2020 before making a move to Aston Martin for the last two years of his career.

Vettel and Raikkonen were teammates at the Prancing Horses from 2015 to 2018 and shared a respectful dynamic with each other. Although the four-time world champion had the measure of the Finnish driver, the latter would always be relied upon for a consistent performance for the team.

Raikkonen, who was a world champion for Ferrari in 2007, was unable to match Vettel's consistent performances and qualifying pace in their four years together. Therefore, he went to Alfa Romeo for his last three years in the sport before ending his career in 2021 with the Swiss-based outfit.

While appearing on the Beyond the Grid podcast in 2022, Vettel was full of praise for the 21-time race winner and said:

“I think Kimi is actually the biggest natural talent I’ve come across, ever. Just in terms of raw speed and it shows in the car, obviously, but it shows also in any other form of car. I think switching – if there was a discipline of switching cars, Kimi would be lapping everybody else."

"Just a natural, it doesn’t take time to adapt to the car, to what the car requires. What the car asks him to do comes naturally to him. If you give him a steering wheel he knows what to do with it. Some you feel it's unfair, you need to get used to it first and an idea of the track or the conditions and for him it was just boom," he added.

On many occasions, Sebastian Vettel had called Kimi Raikkonen the best teammate he had in the sport.

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When Sebastian Vettel spoke about his relationship with Kimi Raikkonen

Former Aston Martin driver Sebastian Vettel previously stated that he and Kimi Raikkonen never had any arguments on and off the track as the latter was very direct in his communication.

As quoted by the aforementioned source, the German reflected that the duo would sort out any form of conflict quickly amongst themselves, saying:

“There was never an argument between the two of us because it was always direct. If we crashed into each other we talked about it, fixed what happened, maybe laughed about it. But there was never a question that anything could sort of shake-up or destabilize the, I don’t want to say bond, but the relationship that we had."

From 2015 to 2018, Sebastian Vettel, as teammate to Kimi Raikkonen, achieved 13 race victories and 10 pole positions. In contrast, Raikkonen managed only one victory in the United States during that period.