Kimi Raikkonen, Michael Schumacher's replacement at Ferrari next year, has been beaten by motorcycle rider Mika Kallio in a poll for Finnish motorsport's man of the year.

Kallio, runner-up in the 125cc class for the past two seasons and moving up to 250cc next year, took 33.1 percent of the public vote in a poll organised by the YLE 2 television station and national motorsport annual Ruutulippu.

"This clearly shows that MotoGP has become more and more popular in Finland, where we have always had strong traditions in rallying and Formula One," Kallio told the official motogp.com web site on Wednesday.

Raikkonen was Formula One championship runner-up in 2005 but his McLaren team failed to win a race in the season just finished.

Kallio also saw off Ford's world rally driver Marcus Gronholm, who has won five times this year but can only finish runner-up to French champion Sebastien Loeb.