Flying Finn

So all the predictions were right. A McLaren-Mercedes did win the Hungarian GP after all, except it wasn’t the one we all thought would. Instead the Finnish national anthem blared out of the Hungaoring tannoy system and it wasn’t for Kimi Raikkonen, either.

Personally I’m delighted for Heikki Kovalainen after the first of what could be many F1 GP victories. Apart from the fact that he has really settled down at McLaren-Mercedes, that he is very popular within the team, and it is down in part to his good nature that there are no repeats of driver friction s witnessed last year between Lewis and Fernando Alonso, I have another reason for my quiet admiration.

A few years back I was lucky enough to be involved in the magnificent Race of Champions at the Stade de France in Paris. At the last moment a young Finn called Kovalainen was called into the event to replace a better known driver. This young Finn promptly refused to read the script, beating David Coulthard in the heats, then Michael Schumacher in the F1 drivers’ final, and finally Sebastian Loeb in the overall final. That’s Coulthard, Schumacher and Loeb!

The best part was that after his wins over the greatest F1 and Rally drivers in the world, the Finn celebrated by leaping on to the roof of his car and performing a victory jig, in front of around 75,000 people packed inside the stadium.

I remember thinking at the time: “I’ve barely heard of you, but you’ve got talent and, above all, you’ve got charisma.” We haven’t seen the best of Heikki Kovalainen yet, neither in nor out of a car, but we will before too long if Budapest is anything to go on.