Kimi Raikkonen is looking forward to beginning his first full World Rally Championship season in Sweden.

The 30-year-old will race for the Red Bull Citroen team after making the switch from Formula One following Ferrari's decision to hand his seat to Fernando Alonso.

The Finn does have previous rallying experience, having entered last season's Rally Finland, but faces a tough start to the campaign on the snowy stages in Sweden and acknowledges it will be a learning experience.

He said: "I'm really looking forward to this weekend. One of the reasons that rallying appeals to me is because there are so many different surfaces to master and you have to be quick on all of them.

"For sure, snow is certainly one of the most specialised. This is all still very new to me, so it's all about gaining experience, but we'll get there."

Raikkonen's co-driver will be the experienced Kaj Lindstrom and he believes their recent outing at the Arctic Rally, where Raikkonen showed good pace following an early crash, has given the pairing a boost.

Lindstrom, the former co-driver of multiple world champion Tommi Makinen, said: "Having one practice rally behind us was very important. We've been working on the pace notes and generally making them more accurate.

"However, Sweden will be quite different in character from the Arctic Rally. The roads are a bit more technical, there's more going on and more information coming to the driver through the headphones.

"Our goal is to have a good clean run and get to the finish. Hopefully we've already made all our mistakes on the Arctic Rally."

Reigning world champion Sebastien Loeb, who is eyeing his seventh straight title this season, believes he is not the favourite for victory in Sweden after his failure to finish when the event was last on the World Championship calendar in 2008.

The Frenchman also expects another tough title battle after winning the final two rallies of last season to finally stave off the challenge of Ford's Mikko Hirvonen.

"I like starting the season with this rally but it looks like the conditions are going to be very difficult," Loeb told www.wrc.com.

"You just have to stay on the road, which isn't all that easy when I think back to the 2008 rally. My only aim is to rack up another world title, but the way last season panned out shows that you can't count your chickens before they're hatched."

This weekend will see the World Rally Championship use the new points system that will also be used in Formula One this season.

The system will see points awarded all the way down to 10th position in the order of 25-18-15-12-10-8-6-5-4-2-1.