Were you watching the sport when he came up? I feel like that is part of it for me. When he came up he was soooo young and sooo inexperienced. I think he'd barely competed in any races before jumping into F1. I went and looked it up and yeah, just 23 car races before F1. The dude practically went from karting, to a spec formula series to F1 in no time at all. Seriously he was driving karts in 1999 and F1 in 2001. Insane. He was so inexperienced they almost didn't grant him a super license.

So from that angle he was someone to watch, an oddity and a new Finn (I came into the sport loving Mika). Then he scored points in his first ever race and was immediately fast. After just 1 year he jumped to McLaren, which is also rare, and he was quick again.

It's hard to say for sure but for me the way he came up so fast and so young like that was really something to me at the time. In a way he heralded a new era of F1 of young guns entering the sport. It used to be that F1 drivers arrived in the sport when they were mid 20s and up. Senna was 24, Prost was 25, Jackie Stewart was 25, Mansell was 27...you get my drift. With Kimi he was just 21 and then we had, Alonso was 22 and finally Vettel who was 20. He marked the start of the shift towards teams looking for younger talent and not being afraid to put the guys in the cars with comparatively little experience. Nobody had less experience before F1 than Kimi though.

Finally, I just want to say that it's perfectly fine for you not to like a driver for any reason.