It's like I have never been away says Kimi

The 'Ice Man' Kimi Raikkonen has made a solid return to Formula One following his two year absence.

The Finnish driver left the Ferrari team in 2009 and went on to try his hand in the World Rally Championship and also had a brief stint in NASCAR in both the trucks and Nationwide Series.

But his home was always Formula One and while many wondered which Kimi Raikkonen would return to F1, the 32-year-old 2007 Formula One World Champion showed us.

From his first testing session where he topped the timing sheets to the opening races in Australia and Malaysia, Kimi has been on form.

The new Lotus E20 is clearly a very good car and Raikkonen has already taken 16 World Championship points from his 7th and 5th placed finishes.

It isn't even a case of Lotus taking advantage of other teams poor early season form, because Lotus has been one of the teams who struggled with a number of issues during winter testing.

Chassis issues forced them to miss thousands of kilometres of running in Barcelona, while Kimi has struggled with steering issues and a gearbox penalty.

Once all these issues have been firmly ironed out, just how good will this Lotus, with Kimi Raikkonen behind the wheel be?

“I think we’ve got off to an encouraging start, It’s been frustrating sometimes with the chassis issues in testing, the qualifying mix-up in Australia and the gearbox change in Malaysia, but we’ve shown we can deal with any problems and come back stronger. The car feels good and we clearly have the pace to be at the front; we just need some better luck.” he told the Lotus official website.

“It feels like I’ve never been away; the team has done a good job and I’m working well with them which makes things easier, It’s a different atmosphere to what I’ve experienced before; everyone is very open and laidback but at the same time they work extremely hard and pay a lot of attention to detail. I feel comfortable here which helps me to focus on racing.”