Kimi Raikkonen clearly loves his racing but can just as clearly take or leave everything that goes with it. Often electrifying behind the wheel, he sounds so wretchedly bored by the whole affair when he's interviewed that you're left wondering exactly why he carries on. He is, to borrow Martin Brundle's memorable phrase, extremely low-voltage.

Raikkonen entered F1 with Sauber in 2001, despite only having competed in 23 car races in his life. He'd won 13 of them but the FIA still needed convincing that he wasn't going to be a danger to himself and others before they issued his superlicence. They needn't have worried: Kimi scored a point in his debut race, having reportedly been asleep only half an hour before the start.

When Mika Hakkinen retired from the sport, Kimi was snapped up by McLaren, where they need to have a Finnish driver to prevent the fall of the Tower of London or something, so Raikkonen found himself paired with David Coulthard, during a season that once again turned out not to be the Scot's year.

Several seasons of poor reliability led Kimi to sign for Ferrari from 2007 and it turned out to be a good choice, since he won the title in his first season with the team, overcoming a seemingly insurmountable 17-point deficit to rookie Lewis Hamilton in the final two races.

It has, however, been Kimi's extra-curricular activities that have generated the most column inches. He has had contretemps with photographers, out-stripped lap-dancers, won snowmobile races under the pseudonym "James Hunt", been thrown out of nightclubs with his inflatable dolphin, raced powerboats dressed as a gorilla and and married a model.

After an electrical fire led to his retirement from second place in Monte Carlo in 2006, the TV cameras followed Kimi as he stomped through the streets, helmet still on, and straight onto a yacht (presumably his own) floating in the harbour. It wouldn't be much of a stretch to imagine him subsequently drinking it dry.

The yacht, that is, not the harbour.

Rubens Barrichello's father and grandfather are also confusingly called Rubens, although Rubens himself had the good sense to name his own sons Eduardo and Fernando. We'll concentrate on the best known Rubens Barrichello here.

Barrichello's career before F1 is impressive: he claimed five Brazilian karting titles, which he followed by winning both the Formula Vauxhall Lotus and the British Formula 3 titles at his first attempt. He graduated to Formula One in 1993 with Jordan and in 1996 he got to drive one of those amazing-looking gold Benson & Hedges cars, although unlike his team-mate Martin Brundle, Rubens preferred to drive his the right way up.

A switch to Stewart in 1997 proved to be what they call "character-building". Barrichello saw the chequered flag at just three races, although one of those was at Monaco, where his second-place finish reduced team boss Jackie Stewart to tears on live TV. In fact, Jackie spent most of that year crying but this was the first time it was for joy. Rubens, no stranger himself to the odd bout of blubbing, fitted right in.

With just a brief mention of the controversial 2002 Austrian Grand Prix, at which Ferrari team orders saw Rubens let Michael Schumacher through for victory just yards from the line, we move on to the remarkable 2003 British Grand Prix, where Barrichello had probably the best race of his F1 career, overtaking anyone and everyone on his way to a memorable victory. His brave pass of Kimi Raikkonen at Bridge is the first and only time anyone has ever overtaken there. Most likely.

Rubens is now the most experienced driver in F1 history, which is a nice way of saying that he's knocking on a bit.

When he wasn't driving people off the road, ramming other cars, parking in the middle of the track or trying to punch David Coulthard, Michael Schumacher displayed a dazzling talent for finding new ways to disadvatage his team-mate.

We're being slightly churlish, of course, but Schumacher's reputation as a driver will forever be coloured by the unsporting manner in which he raced. His first break in F1 came with Jordan at Spa in 1991 and his second with Ferrari at Silverstone in 1999, when he fractured a leg crashing at Stowe.

His final F1 drive through the field at Interlagos was a reminder of what his legacy could have been if he hadn't been quite so ready to tarnish it quite so frequently.

The wanker.

Mark Webber is an Australian racing driver and a bloody good one too, mate, although ever since an aerodynamic fault led to his Mercedes somersaulting twice on the Mulsanne straight during practice for the 1999 Le Mans 24 Hours, he has put forward a convincing case for being Johnny Herbert's successor as the unluckiest man in F1 or, indeed, sportscars.

He has lost more F1 podium finishes through no fault of his own than he has any right to and more than once he has been in a position to win a race that has then been snatched away from him. Notable amongst these occasions was the drenched 2007 Japanese Grand Prix, when his own nearly-team-mate Sebastian Vettel ran into the back of him behind the safety car just as it looked as if the second-placed Webber had the beating of eventual winner Lewis Hamilton. Strewth!

In fact, the Japanese race in 2007 turned out to be really quite eventful for Mark, who had food poisoning for the race and threw up inside his helmet during the first safety car period. Yuk.

Given his luck, it is perhaps not surprising that Mark is also twice a winner of the "Most Gratuitous Use Of The Word 'F*ck' In A Live ITV Broadcast" award¹.


¹"What was Sato doing, for f*ck's sake?", Turkey 2005 and "Kids with not enough experience to do a good job that they f*ck it all up", Japan 2007

Alonso's full name is Fernando Alonso Diaz and few people realise that he is the half-brother of Cameron Diaz, the well-known jizz-haired actress.

His success in Formula One has led to a huge growth of interest in the sport in his home country of Spain, where not so long ago you could easily pick up cheap tickets to the Grand Prix and pretty much have your pick of seats, so thanks for that, Fernando.

Like many of the sport's stars, Alonso began his F1 career with Minardi and he made a splash at his first race, where he out-qualified his team-mate by over two and a half seconds. That margin is rendered slightly less impressive when you learn that his team-mate was Tarso Marques who, as racing drivers go, has a lovely personality.

Fernando was soon snapped up by Renault, where he spent a year testing before being promoted to a race seat. He became the then youngest world champion in 2005 and the youngest double champion in 2006. There followed an abbreviated tenure at McLaren which failed to yield a third title, largely because he proved unable to beat a rookie, after which he was welcomed back to the Renault team, where he is expected to wait grumpily until a Ferrari seat becomes available.

Alonso is an exceptionally talented and complete racing driver but he also has a reckless - often self-destructive - streak and an eccentrically unique take on what it means to be a team-player, traits which have doubtless closed a number of F1 doors to him.

In 2005 he was appointed one of UNICEF's Goodwill Ambassadors, which may explain why he never has any left for anyone else.