Living up to his 'Iceman' nickname, Kimi Raikkonen shrugged off his last stage roll in Finland yesterday as 'part of the sport' and said his World Rally Championship debut on the Rally Finland had been good fun. Despite engine problems on Saturday, Raikkonen was placed fifteenth overall when he crashed his Grande Punto Abarth S2000 on a left-hand corner, 3 km from the start of the final stage of the day, the 29.29 km Vaarinmaja (SS19), the longest test of the event.

The Italian Super 2000 car, which is prepared and run by Tommi Makinen Racing, rolled into a ditch and although crowds of spectators managed to drag it back onto the road it was too badly damaged to carry on. Minutes after the accident, Raikkonen said the crash was the result of putting his car in the wrong position on the approach to the corner. "I knew that place but I came in with too wide a line," he said, "I thought we were going to go wide but then, unfortunately, there were a lot of rocks and when I hit them the car went over. I thought we wouldn’t finish the rally because we had too many problems with the engine! But it was good fun and nobody got hurt. It happens - it's part of rallying," he added.

Up to that point Raikkonen had hugely impressed the rally fraternity with his ability on his World Rally Championship (WRC) debut, which was also his first outing on gravel. The Rally Finland was the Ferrari F1 driver's fourth rally in a budding stage career after contesting two events held on snow-and-ice in his native land at the beginning of the year and a minor asphalt-surface event in Italy. As well as the demands of learning a gravel surface he also had to grapple with using pace notes effectively on a rally where this counts for so much.

Back in the Service Park, Raikkonen's co-driver Kaj Lindstrom told wrc.com he was proud of what Kimi had achieved. "He proved he has the speed, which before the rally nobody knew for sure," he said. "Getting to the finish of the rally was the main thing here, but with the engine in such a bad shape we knew, realistically, that wasn't going to happen. Kimi wasn't overdriving to compensate for the engine, it was all down to being on the wrong line on a very tricky corner - the same one which caught out Mads Ostberg." Lindstrom quickly confirmed that the extent of the damage ruled out a SuperRally return today (Sunday) for the final loop of stages before the rally concludes. He also said more rallies with Raikkonen were a possibility but wouldn't be drawn on when and where.