Kimi Raikkonen’s former performance coach Mark Arnall once “pissed” the Finnish former driver after defeating him in badminton. Arnall recently shared the details of the same when he appeared as a guest on the Pitlane Life Lesson podcast.
Arnall revealed that it was Raikkonen’s mom who explained to him how “pissed” the Ferrari former driver was after his loss. According to Arnall, Raikkonen’s mom said, “What did you do to Kimi? He came back and threw his bag in the corner, slammed the door in his bedroom, and said, don’t disturb me. He was so pissed off he lost“.
Since Arnall was Raikkonen’s performance coach, he knew the psyche of an F1 driver. Hence, he justified Raikkonen’s reaction by adding, “They’re ultra-competitive. I mean, none of these guys want to lose. And no matter what you see them say on TV, they do not want to lose anything. And I think that’s what drives them.”
Arnall and Raikkonen didn’t play badminton for a while after the Finn’s humiliating defeat. However, the Iceman was secretly making himself better at badminton during this time, so that he wouldn’t lose in the future.
Arnall revealed that the Finn had been practicing with a professional badminton player to get better. He said, “He [Raikkonen] was like a different person. And he’d got some Finnish badminton player to play badminton with and practiced like crazy.”
Eventually, when the two decided to play again, Raikkonen made it extremely difficult for Arnall. However, his efforts were still not good enough to beat Arnall.
