Raikkonen returns this Sunday in a NASCAR race

Kimi Raikkonen he retired to his beloved Switzerland at the end of last year’s Formula 1 season and enjoyed the last eight months with his young family. “Not really,” said the 2007 F1 champion, but here he is, not a year into retirement, and Raikkonen will be racing again.

It is on Sunday Watkins Glen International, upstate New York, in a NASCAR test. The driver known as “The Iceman”, for his unintentionally funny demeanor (cool, no fuss), was persuaded to get back behind the wheel of TrackHouse Racing and its ambitious Project91 program.

Project91 was created to raise the profile of NASCAR worldwide with the best drivers from other categories. First on the list is Raikkonen, who has already competed in an Xfinity Series and a Truck Series race at Charlotte Motor Speedway during one weekend in 2011, the season Raikkonen took a year off from his job. 19 year career in F1.

Raikkonen, 42, follows NASCAR and has been interested in the stock car series for more than a decade. He had hoped to also race in the Cup Series race in 2011, but that did not happen and he returned to F1, where he claimed the last three of his 21 career wins in the following decade. “It’s still a learning phase for all teams with a new car.” This project was announced in May, before TrackHouse was officially considered a good championship-ranked team.

“The only thing we can do is try our best and hope to get a good result. You never know, in whatever category or race you choose, you never know what is going to happen. So I trusted what they said and they have done pretty neat. … In NASCAR, it happens easily.” Raikkonen said he had several offers to race in the past eight months, but Marks’s was the only one “so far I’ve said yes to.”