Mika Hakkinen: F1's 'luckiest' champion?

The Athletic Hello motor racing fans and welcome to and Colossally That's History, the podcast that re-appraises motor racing history. I'm Matt Bishop and for the ninth time in this Colossally season, I find myself sitting opposite my old friend Richard Williams. How's it going Richard? All fine, thank you Matt and very much looking forward to another chance to swap anecdotes, opinions and of course, anorac facts about motor racing. As am I Richard, as am I especially as this episode concerns a man I know very well, Mika Hakkanan. Yes indeed, the world champion of 1998 and 1999. Very same, now some people might find the title of this podcast which is Hakkanan F1's luckiest champion, a little provocative perhaps. After all, how could Mika Hakkanan widely and rightly regard it as one of the quickest drivers of his generation, and a man who often went toe to toe with Anne Beat, Michael Schumacher, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, be considered a lucky world champion. Well, we intend to explain why. That's right, and the luck we're referring to in this instance refers to a specific moment in time at Adelaide in 1995, which forms the hook of this episode. It was there on the streets of Australia's fifth most popular city that Hakkanan suffered a devastating crash in the first qualifying session. On another day, in another car, in a different set of circumstances, Hakkanan almost certainly wouldn't have survived, let alone drive a car again, let alone go on to become a double world champion. But he did, and it was that word lucky that kept coming up afterwards. Although, as we'll make clear over the next hour or so, the accident itself was the result of terribly bad luck. But his survival, Mika's survival, according to the doctors who treated him, owed a lot to good luck, and enabled him to achieve the kinds of things in his career that he had always seemed destined to achieve, but which, as he lay in his hospital bed in the days and weeks, after his Adelaide chunt, it initially looked as though he really never would. Yep, but let's first go back to his childhood in Vantar, a city north of Helsinki, the capital of Finland, where he was born in 1968. And when Mika was five years old, his parents, Harry, a part-time taxi driver, and Eila, a secretary, rented him a go-kart to take to his local track. At that point in motoracing history, Finns were known chiefly as "Aserale drivers", which probably a lot to do with growing up with plenty of ice around, I think. Rano Altonon was the European champion in 1965, followed by Pallitoyvan in 1968, and Marco Allen won the World title in 1978, and then there'd be others like Harry Varten and Hannum Mikola, and lots more to come. Yes, they were all brilliant Finnish rally drivers, the ones you've mentioned, and there are many more whom you could have named alongside them. Finnish Rallias and Racers 2 all appeared, and indeed appear, now still, to have astonishing car control. And I agree with you when you say that, probably, that probably had a lot to do with having grown up with plenty of ice around, snow, of course, too. I'm reminded of one winter many years ago, January 2004, when I visited Mickahackenen in his log cabin, about 120 miles, so 190 odd kilometers north of Helsinki. It was seriously cold, remember it was January, minus 12, and there was deep snow everywhere, and I'll tell you about my visit a bit later on in this podcast. Yes, please Matt, I certainly want to hear about an F1 driver living in a log cabin. Yes, well you will. Although I should make clear it was a big two story log cabin, and it wasn't his primary residence. But what I wanted to share about that now is that the next day before flying home to London, I visited some friends who lived in Torku, I think it's pronounced, T-U-R-K-U, or Turku, which is about. Possibly Turku, yeah. Shall we go with Turku or of Turku? Okay, Turku, which is about 100 miles, so therefore about 160 kilometers, due west of Helsinki. So I drove my hire car from Mickah's log cabin back to Helsinki airport. I returned to the hire company, and then I got a train from Helsinki to Turku, passing through a station incidentally called Sálo, spelled exactly as in Mickah Sálo, which seemed oddly appropriate. Anyway, when I got to Turku, it was snowing heavily. I made for the taxi rank to get a taxi to my friend's apartment, and when I got there I saw a strange and wondrous thing. There was a line of taxis on the rank, and I noticed that the narrow service road along which the taxi drivers had to drive to park up on the rank involved a very tight happen. So tight, you know, that in the summer they would have had to do a three-point turn to get their taxis around it. But of course it wasn't the summer, it was the winter, and the snow was deep and even, perhaps even deep and crisp and even as the saying goes. So to a man, and indeed to a woman, every taxi driver executed a perfect handbrake turn to spin their taxis onto the rank. They thought nothing of it either. Some of them were, well, they were, well, economically smoking as they did their perfect handbrake turns. It was magical. That's Finland for you, isn't it? Yes, indeed, Finland. They didn't have to be drinking shots of herbal vodka at the time too. They were, of course they were. Anyway, by the end of the 70s, as well as all those rally aces, there was also a flying thin in F1. That was Kekki Rosberg, actually born in Stockholm, Sweden, but raised in Finland, who drove his early seasons for Theodore, ATS, Wolfen, Fittipaldi, before signing for Williams in 1982 and becoming World Champion in his first season with the team, despite winning only one Grand Prix that year. So young Mickahackinen had a current role model, as he progressed from winning championships in carts to Formula 4 and Formula 3. He also had a friend who lived in the same street just a year older, who shared his ambitions. Another Mickah, Mickah Solo, who you just mentioned. Also a winner in carts and who went on from there. But was Armickah, Mickahackinen, impressive in single-seaters straight away, man. Well, as a kid, young Mickah did what most young Finns did. He played ice hockey. That's what he started off doing. But when he was five years old, as you say, he had a go in a go-cart for the first time, a rented cart. And he was pretty promising, but he carried on playing ice hockey for a bit as well. Although I will say he did shunt that rented go-cart a couple of times. But I think we can forgive him because he was only five years old, as I say. But when he was six, his dad bought him his first cart, which incidentally had previously been raced by Henri Teuvenen, who'd outgrown it. Teuvenen was 12 years older than Hacken, and yes, I am referring to the same Henri Teuvenen who'd later abandoned racing for rallying, who was absolutely brilliant in rallying, by the way. Although he never became World Rally Champion because he lost his life on the tour de course, the famous rally on Corsica in 1986, aged just 29, very sad, a great loss. And one of those Finnish rally drivers, who you wonder what would have happened if they'd ever gotten themselves into F1? Absolutely right. He was a brilliantly talented driver. But anyway, a tragedy and who knows, one of those what-ifs. He's six-year-old Hackenen, took to Teuvenen's old cart, like the proverbial Dr. Water, and he won his first cart race in it in 1975, at the K-Mola Stadium in Vanta, which is, you've already mentioned, Vanta. He continued to enjoy plenty of success in carting, and he won regional carting championships in 1978, at age 9, and 1979, at age 10. The following year, 1980, age 11, he won the SWEHLE, he was getting a year older each year. Strange isn't it? That's strange. There must be a thing to say. There might be a little bit more of that in my next, because I've jotted these things down, so you'll have to bear with me. I'm adding one each time. Are you? Excellent. Okay, but not even my mask. Could I put that? Tell me if my mouth is wrong. But anyway, the following year, 1980, age 11, he won the Swedish lap planned carting cup, and in 1981, aged. Not a clue. Tell us. 12. Thank you. 12. He won his first national title, the Finnish Carting Championship 85CC Class. But that's all carting in which young maker was clearly brilliant, but you actually asked me about his early single-seater form, didn't you, Richard? I did indeed. Which is cars. So. Well, he made his car racing debut, single-seaters, in 1987, aged 18, in a Raynard Formula Ford 1600 that he bought from JJ Lato, who was a couple of years older than him, 18+2 being 20, and who'd also make it to Formula 1, as Mickers, Hacken and Sallow both would also. Anyway, Mickers won nine races that year in that Formula Ford 1600 Raynard, and the following year, 1988, when he was 19, he ventured to the UK where he finished runner-up in the Voxel Lotus Championship to Alan McNish, who'd also go on to a good Formula 1 career and a brilliant Lamar career, which that classic 24-hour race he'd win, I think three times, but Richard, you're the expert. Yeah, once with Porsche and twice with Audi. There you go. You're three time winner of Lamar before he was done with it. And the same year in 1988, I should say, Mickers won the Opel Lotus EDFA Euro Series. So now we're up to 1990 and Mickers up to 21, and he was then selected to be a member of the Marlborough World Championship team, which was a kind of early version of the young driver academies that many Formula 1 teams nowadays support. And there, Mickers was mentored by one James Hunt, the 1976 Formula 1 drivers world champion. And via Hunt, he came to the attention of Kecky Rossberg, who you've already mentioned, who recognized his talent and kind of took him under his wing. And he was also noticed by the McLaren Boss, Ron Dennis, which was an important connection as we all come to discuss. In that same year, 1990, Mickers won the British Formula 3 Championship comfortably, finishing first in nine of the 17 races and second in five of the other eight. And by the way, second in the championship with six wins and five seconds was his old friend, Sallow, who from then on tended always to be referred to as the other Mickers, which probably are dim a little bit, don't you reckon? I should think. Pretty amazing, isn't it? Two blokes, the same street in Finland coming to Britain and winning 15 of 17. Amazing. Amazing. And going on to, you know, particularly Hakkanan, but both going on to excellent racing careers, including a lot of Formula 1. Anyway, at the end of that year, 1990, we're talking about Mickers Hakkanan, not Sallow, Mickers Hakkanan, entered the Macau, Grompry, which then as now was a highly prestigious Formula 3 race. He won the first heat, and he might well have won the second heat as well, had he not been involved in a shunt with a man with whom he'd lock horns many times over the next decade. Michael Schumacher. And by this time, 1991, as you say, Hakkanan was being mentored by Rosberg, who'd retired from F1 at the end of the 1986 season with five Grompry wins and one world championship his name. Mickers got a test with Beneton and actually put up better times than their experience and very good number one driver, Alexander and Anini. Pretty credible performance. That's extremely, yeah. But instead, he chose to sign with Lotus, who were then being run by Peter Collins, remember him? I do. And I'll see who'd worked with Colin Chapman and had taken over the team in partnership with the designer Peter Wright. At the start of the season, the second Lotus driver was Julian Bailey, who was soon replaced by Johnny Herbert. Mickers did manage a fifth place at Imola in his third Grompry, but otherwise it was a poor season with an uncompetitive car. Sadly, it was, yes, but he nonetheless stayed with Lotus for 1992, paired with Johnny Herbert again, and thankfully for both of them, the car was a little bit more competitive. In fact, Hakkanan was able to score points in six of the 16 rounds of the 1992 Formula One World Championship. And remember, this was when points only went down to sixth position, so they were hard to come by. Anyway, I want to tell you about one of those six points scoring occasions, because it came in round nine, the British Grompry at Silverstone. And I want to talk about it because it's a nice little story. On the morning of the race, Hakkanan became trapped in one of Silverstone's legendary traffic jams, as he tried to make his way to the circuit. The reason was he'd overslept, and the friend he'd asked to be his backup alarm had got drunk the night before, and it's slept in himself, so he hadn't managed to call Mickers. It wasn't a finished taxi driver, but it was. It was a finished something, I'm sure. Anyway, sorry, Finland, but you know, you do like a party. You do. Anyway, so Mickers was already running late, and because of the traffic, he was now in real danger of missing the morning warm-up, which was a big thing on Grompry racetays back then as you'll remember Richard. Anyway, as Mickers tells it, while he was stuck in traffic, he spotted a police woman on a motorbike, so he explained who he was, and he asked her if he could drive on the wrong side of the road for the final part of the journey, given that he was quite close to the track already. Richard agreed, so he set off duly on the wrong side of the road, and before long he was being pursued by a fleet of police motorbikes. Mistakenly he thought he was being afforded a police escort, so what did he do? Well, what would you do? He put his foot down. It was only when he arrived at the main gate, and he found more police waiting for him there, that he finally clocked that he might actually be in some trouble. It wasn't a police escort at all. He wound down his window and a big policeman lent in. Mickers tried to explain and plead his innocence, but the policeman said, "I don't care if you're Nigel Manson." Boom! Exactly. I don't know whether he actually said who you think you are Nigel Manson, but perhaps he did. Or if he'd been a certain age, who do you think you are still? I'm not sure. Yes, exactly. Anyway, then he added, "Have you been drinking?" "No, no, Mickers protested. I'm driving in today's Grand Prix, but that didn't cut it, and Mickers was arrested and thrown into a police cell. Had it not been for a last minute intervention by the Lotus Boss Peter Collins, you've already mentioned, Mickers probably would have missed the race. As it was, though, he started it and he finished it in sixth place, scoring one remarkably hard-earned world championship point." And off the track as well as on it. Exactly. And that was a race won, of course, by Nigel Manson in a Williams. And there's a belief that Mickers actually came close to a Williams drive for 1993. The story goes that Peter Collins tried to block the move by claiming that Lotus had Mickers under contract, which later turned out not to have been the case. But before Williams could complete the deal for Hackenon, they missed the deadline for submitting their entry for the 1993 season. And that then required them to get unanimous agreement from the rest of the teams to be allowed to race at all that season. And it said that at that point, Peter Collins withheld his agreement until Williams dropped its interest in Hackenon. Do you recall having heard that one before? Maybe, yes. And it is a very formula one story, isn't it? It is. But today, Mickers says he turned down Williams because he didn't like the way they treated their drivers. And that was a pretty bold move on his part, given that they had by far the best car at that time. Yeah. Whatever the truth, or otherwise, of that story, at the end of 1992, Mickers had been approached by Ron Dennis, who feared that he was losing Epp and Senna, his triple-world champion, to Williams, and that he'd need somebody pretty quickly and pretty quick to drive alongside his new recruit, Michael Andretti. Mickers signed with Ron, but then Senna changed his mind at the last possible minute and decided to stay for another season on a deal that you might remember paid him a million dollars a race. And it would leave him free to join Williams at the end of the season. So Mickers became the team's reserve driver for 1993, which he wasn't expecting and probably didn't take very kindly to. That's a good point. Yep. But when Andretti left with three races to go, having disappointed the team and no doubt himself with a lot of lackluster performances, Mickers got his chance. How did he take it, Matt? Well, Mickers got that chance at Estaril in Portugal, and that was the race that made him really. It really made him. Why? Because he did what almost no one ever did. He outqualified the great Erten Senna. Not only that, but he outqualified Senna on his Hacken and McLaren debut, when Senna was at his absolute best, which he was in 1993. Because well, 1993 was arguably, well certainly in my opinion, perhaps Erten's very best formal one season in many ways. Would you agree? Yes, even though, of course, he didn't have anything like the best car, and that's probably why it was the best season, because he outdrowed the car's potential. He did. One five Grand Prix and a V8 engine McLaren against the V10s of the Williams pair. Brilliant, brilliant season for him. Anyway, so in that season of all seasons for Hacken and on his McLaren debut to a about qualified him. What actually happened at Estreil? Well, the two Williams drivers, Damon Hill and Alan Prost delivered a front row lockout in that order, Damon on the pole. But Micka was best of the rest driving a superb quality lap that earned him third place on the grid. And Senna baffled and properly miffed. Was was fourth. He wouldn't have taken that well. He didn't. He didn't. Anyway, neither of them finished the race the next day as it happens. But the entire formal one world now set up and took notice of the 24 year old flying fin and in a big way. Yeah, at this point in his career, no one was in any doubt that Hakkin was very quick. But he was still raw and a bit crush-prone. And the following year, 1994, he finished the season in a fine fourth place in the drivers championship, scoring a second place at Spa and five thirds. And that was despite being handicapped by McLaren's deal to run Persia's V10 engines. A perfectly decent power unit for endurance racing and quite capable of winning at Le Mans, which it did. But not good enough to compete with the Renault and Ferrari engines in F1. But along the way, he'd been handed a one-raced ban for causing a multiple pile-up, like a lighting with David Kultard at the start of the German Grand Prix at Hakkinheim, while already on a suspended sentence for slamming the door on Rubens Barichello in the previous race Silverstone sending them both off. In motorsports report of the race in Germany, David Tramayne remarked rather pithily, I think, that quote, "One day, Mika will learn that merely ignoring people you think you've overtaken doesn't mean that they aren't still there." And that's a nice quote. It is, like, a lesson that some of today's truck drivers could probably just take to heart. Very possibly rich, it's a very wise two. So anyway, the jury was very much still out on whether Mika Hakkinon would ever be able to make the most of his potential. McLaren made the big switch from Persia power to Mercedes engines for 95, but it took a while for the benefit to come through. The MP410 was a terrible car. Ugly car too. It was, with a very high nose, rather ungainly, and a horrible little mini wing thingy on the engine cover. Is that what they're called? Mini wing thingies. But, yeah, I'm reliably informed by him. Take a look at that. The techies, it's a mini wing. Yes. That's what Adrian Neue calls them anyway. But as I say, it was also a terrible car, and not only because of what happened to Nigel Mansl when he joined the team after his two seasons in Indie cars in an attempt to regain his standing in F1. Actually, of course, it wasn't the standing that was the problem. It was the sitting because his behind was too big for the car's narrow monococ. And of course, nothing could be done about that. So he gave up after a couple of races with a very sore bum. And that was all a bit of a circus. But Hakkinon tried to get on with the job and actually took a couple of very good second places at Monza and Suzuka. But it was all a bit of a struggle. And then things went from bad as they sometimes do to worse. Yes, they did. And in a big way, because in the final round of the 1995 Formula One season at Adelaide, disaster struck during Friday's first qualifying session. Rounding the ultra-fast brewery bend, right-hander, Hakkinon's car snapped sideways, hit a curb and became airborne. It then slammed into the outside concrete wall at a sickening speed, which was later estimated to be 125 miles per hour or 200 kilometers per hour. The Formula One world held its breath as Mick as McLaren came to rest with its driver's head slumped, which is always a horrible thing to see, isn't it? It is indeed. Hakkinon had been unfortunate in the most of the exit of the term at which he crashed was protected by three layers of tire barrier in front of the concrete wall. But where he crashed, there was only one layer of tires. His head hit the steering wheel before snapping back and rattling violently against the sides of the cockpit. Remember, this was before the days of padded cockpit sides, like we have now, or Hans Helmet harnesses, head and neck support, which was still being developed back then and wouldn't become compulsory in F1 for another five years. What had happened was that Hakkinon's left rear tire had suddenly failed approaching the right-hander, which is what pitched him off so violently. Good year, who then the tire supplier later found a four-inch cut in the tire, probably caused by debris. Johnny Herbert and Pedro Lamy had similar cuts to their tires. The three-layer tire barrier, Hakkinon just missed, was extended for the rest of the weekend at the request of Damon Hill, Gerhard Berger and Michael Schumacher, the director of the Grand Prix Drivers Association. But of course, that was too late to help poor Micka. Absolutely. It was, yes, sadly. And here's the little of what Micka remembers of the incident today. Quote, "I remember being in the wall. I couldn't move my legs and arms. I couldn't focus. I thought, 'Okay, Micka, just relax. Don't fight it. Don't panic. Everything's going to be okay.' Then I was gone. And I don't remember any more." It was all looking very grim. And we'll tell you what happened next after this short break. Now, in doing my research for this episode, I came across a Reddit thread entitled, "Is Micka Hakkinon the most unlikely crash survivor in Formula One history?" It's a good question truth be told. Okay, of course, there have been quite a few other remarkable Formula One discoveries over the years. For example, we described length, Nikki Lauders' incredible, truly incredible 1976 comeback in season two of this very podcast. But when you go over the details of what happened to Hakkinon at Adelaide in 1995, it really is a miracle that he's still with us today. Yeah, and perhaps we should warn you that there are some rather graphic descriptions in this section. So if it's not for you, perhaps just skip ahead a minute or two. But we talked about luck earlier. And this is where Micka, having been dreadfully unlucky to have the crash in the first place, then gets very lucky indeed in what happened next. As he described himself, "Micka quickly fell unconscious after the crash. His skull fractured, his airway blocked, and blood pouring from his head. Doctors would later add that there was bleeding on the brain. At this point, it's a desperate situation. And if he doesn't get medical attention, immediately he is going to die." And that's when two volunteer doctors from the Royal Adelaide Hospital arrived on the scene. They were Dr. Jerome Cockings, an intensive care specialist, and Dr. Stephen Lewis and Neurosurgeon. And they happened to be stationed at that very corner. Under intense pressure in incredibly difficult conditions, Cockings performs an emergency tracheotomy right at the track, inserting a tube into Micka's throat to restore ventilation and oxygenation immediately. Without that, his brain would have been starved of oxygen, and he could have suffered irreversible brain damage. I mean, can you imagine what it took to perform such a procedure in those circumstances? Talk about calmness and depression. Incredible. I mean, just incredible. And a word we should say a word to about Professor Sid Watkins, the famous Formula One doctor, who arrived at the scene in the medical car shortly after the other doctors whom you've just mentioned. And well, without Sid, there might not have been any extra doctors at the track at all. Yeah, that's absolutely true. It was Bernie Eccleston's decision to bring Prof Watkins into the sport that contributed hugely to higher safety standards, particularly in the availability of prompt medical care at the circuits. In his autobiography, Sid described how he arrived at the scene of the crash within two minutes and played a part in extracting Micka from the wrecked car before the emergency tracheotomy could be performed. And even more fortunate for Hacchanum and having two expert doctors immediately on the scene, followed by Sid very soon afterwards, was the fact that the hospital itself was only 200 meters away. That proximity allowed him to receive the full spectrum of trauma care as quickly as possible. And actually, Micka became one of the first patients in the world to benefit from a new ultrasound based brain-blood oxygen technique, which was actually developed by the aforementioned Dr. Stephen Lewis, one of the doctors who attended him immediately after the shunt whom you've mentioned, which enabled him and his fellow doctors to keep blood flowing around Hacchanum's brain, which of course was crucial. What are the odds against that? The guy who's there on the scene is someone who's invented a new way of dealing with it. It's extraordinary. I mean, as Dr. Lewis himself would later describe Hacchanum and he said, "Micka was a very lucky guy." I mean, that is an understatement. Anyway, Dr. Lewis went on as follows, quote, "What distinguishes him from the the ordinary guy in a serious road accident is the fact that we got to him within the first minute or two, when he was slumped over, not breathing, and his blood pressure was low, and we were able to correct those things instantly." So put simply in almost any other circumstances, Mickahacken and would have died there and died there. And it's worth saying at this point that as an expression of thanks to Dr. Lewis and his colleagues, Mickah would later make a substantial undisclosed donation to help build a much needed helipad at the Royal Adelaide Hospital. Mickah was always a class act in that way. Yes, indeed. And here's how Mickah himself, speaking to Motorsport in 2010, described the aftermath of the accident, recalling waking up in the hospital. Here's what he said, quote, "I was lying there with tubes everywhere, so I knew I was in a hospital. The first person I saw was Lisa Dennis, then Ron's wife, this tall figure by the bed with blonde hair in a big smile. And I thought she must be an angel. Then I saw Ron standing next to her, and I thought, 'Oh, okay, I'm not in heaven yet,'" not implying that Ron himself doesn't have angelic qualities, of course. Of course not, we would not. But it's interesting that one of the first things Hacken and did was to ask Ron what had happened, because he was desperate to know that the accident hadn't been his fault, which he wasn't. But there was a long road ahead for Mickah, both physically and mentally. He'd stay in hospital in Adelaide for two months, quote, from him again. I had so many tests and operations. Crazy tests, needles in my face to test the nerves, drilling a hole in my head to relieve the pressure, things like that. It was nasty. At first, because of the pain I was thinking, 'I'm going to die. I'm going to die. My whole life was looking at my watch to see when it was time for them to turn the valve in my drip for the next dose of drugs. The accident had damaged the nerves in my face, and I couldn't move my eyelids, so they had to tape my eyes shut to help me try to sleep. I couldn't drink properly, because my mouth didn't work, so the water just fell out of my mouth. It was disgusting. I remember thinking, 'This doesn't look good.' So it wasn't, 'Will I be able to race again?' It was, 'Will I ever be able to live a normal life?' It really was an extraordinary situation. He found himself in an ordeal. An ordeal. That's where the mental, emotional and psychological challenge really kicked in for him. As Mika once said, 'You can't escape what you've gone through. You have to live with it.' He not only lived with it, but he also conquered it. He's a tough cookie, is Mika. He's also spoken about the support and, quote, 'protection provided by Ron Dennis.' Ron was actually always a big supporter of Mika, wasn't he? Oh, absolutely, yes. I think it's interesting that Mika should have used the word 'protection' and not only the word 'support'. Many years later, when I was McLaren's comms and PR chief, which was a job I did from 2008 to 2017, I remember once asking Ron, 'Who'd been his most favourite driver and who'd been his least favourite driver?' He came up with two answers, actually, instantly, quote, 'The worst was Philip Alio. He was crap,' he said. Yeah, actually, Matt, did you know that Philip Alio raced in 109 Grand Prix and didn't finish one of them on the same lap as the leader? Anorak Fax, Richard. That certainly is one, and no, I didn't know that. So, so Ron may have had a point, actually. Sorry, Philip, if you're listening. Sorry. Anyway, I then asked Ron, who'd been his most favourite driver. And this is what he said. Well, then he paused, and he looked up and to the left, as he always does when he's working out how to phrase a complex thought. And he said, quote, 'When you think your driver may not be going to make it, and you spend hour after hour by his hospital bed, and you do whatever you possibly can to help him pull through and then thrive, then he digs deep and starts racing again and winning. And eventually he wins not one, but two Formula One drivers world championships for you. Well, that driver is always going to have a very special place in your affections.' Oh, that's a very, very nice quote. But even so, as an insurance policy, understandably enough, Ron looked to line up Al Amprost for the 1996 season, just in case Hacchinen's recovery wouldn't prove complete enough for him to race again in F1. And according to David Kool-Tard, who was the other McLaren driver at the time, Micka wasn't at all happy about that. Although it may have spurred him on to return in time for the start of the 1996 season, whether he was ready for it or not. He made his comeback test at Paul Ricare in February 1996, just 87 days after the crash. And actually he said that what he was afraid of was not where they'd be able to go flat out, or whether he'd lost any of his raw speed, but how his mechanics would react when they first saw him. He'd lost a lot of weight, his head had been shaved in hospital to help with his treatment. And one side of his face was actually still paralyzed because of the nerve damage. In his own words, he looked a bit of a monster. Yeah. And I remember that his smile was lopsided too. And speaking of weight loss and specifically fitness, Micka actually said that it wasn't until the tail end of 1997, you know, in which year at Hereth, he scored his first Formula 1 Grand Prix win, that he felt he'd finally recovered his full fitness. But as you say, Richard, he did remarkably return for the first Grand Prix of the 1996 Formula One season, which took place just four months after his Adelaide accident in Australia, ironically, although this time it was in Melbourne, rather than Adelaide, unsurprisingly, given that he'd been out of hospital for only a couple of months, because he'd stayed in hospital for quite a few weeks actually, as you've already mentioned. So on the long flight to Australia, his mind was racing. He later said, quote, "When you have a shunt like that, it changes your thinking. And when you're out on the racetrack, you calculate your risks more. I did feel a little more tense than normal. I was sitting on the plane on the way over thinking, this is the country where I had a big, big shunt. But after a while, you tell yourself not to think about it too much," unquote. Formula One drivers are remarkably good at compartmentalising things and just getting on with the job like that, aren't they, Richard? Yeah, it's something that's pretty hard for we mere mortals to understand, but it seems to come with the job of being a racing driver, at least for the ones at the very top. Mind you, you know, it's probably the same for a jumpsjockey after a bad fall at one of the big fences in the Grand National. The ability to erase the details of a trauma in order to risk repeating it is one of the mysteries of the human mind. Yeah, and that's very well put, Richard, if I may say so. You know, a sports person's ability to go again as hard as ever, despite dashed hopes and indeed broken bones sometimes can obviously involve real courage too. And you mentioned jumpsjockeys. Well, I once sat next to the great seven-time champion jumpsjocky, John Frankham, at a charity do many years ago now, and I asked him all about that. And I remember very clearly what he said to me because I thought it was absolutely fascinating. I didn't write it down, but this is almost certainly very close to word for word what he said. Quote, "When you're inexperienced, it isn't so bad because each fall is a surprise because you think you've got everything under control and the horse is going to clear the fence ahead of you. No problem. But as you gain more experience, you learn to feel when the horse is approaching the fence wrongly even before the horse does. It's a kind of sixth sense. So you know you're going to fall and you know it's going to hurt ahead of time. And that's not a nice feeling. And the kind of experience and expertise that gives you that kind of sixth sense makes riding a steeple chase a flat out harder as well as easier." Isn't that interesting? Yeah, very. And of course after falls or crashes, sometimes the effect to do linger. We can think about Carl Vendlinger who suffered a bad head injury at Monaco in 1994. He was such a promising driver before that crash. He was. But never the same after it. He came back at the start of the next season and did half a dozen races for a team who were very keen to help him get back to being his old self. But eventually they had to admit it wasn't going to happen. I don't know if you remember what Max Veltey's team manager at Salber said. He wasn't the same. Yes, he looked the same and he can walk and talk the same but his reactions aren't the same. The really sad thing is that I don't think even Carl can tell what's different in his driving. That's fascinating. Yep. Anyway, Vendegin was bowing out of there for one just as Huckin and was making his comeback. Mika had done a test at Paul Ricare where he said the mechanics had freaked him out by being unnaturally quiet. Obviously they were apprehensive about how he was going to get on. I had to tell them to chill out and lighten up, he said. You can't blame them. You can't. No, they ended up with the clue what was going on with him really. Then he did a preseason testing at Esteril where he was quickest. Testing doesn't necessarily mean anything definitive but he gave him a boost for when he got into the car at Melbourne. Although according to K.A. Rosberg who was by now his official manager, he was freaked out by the attention he got as soon as he arrived at the track. But once he got going he qualified a brilliant fifth behind the two Williams and the two Ferraris but almost a second and a half faster than his teammate David Kultard. And he finished fifth a really excellent result. Yeah, he was back. In a word he was back. And here's what he was thinking in his own words quote, "When the plane took off from Melbourne I thought how fantastic it was to leave Australia this way. Feeling well, having scored points, it wasn't easy. You're only human, you have feelings and you have to fight a bit, not to think back to last year. But you have to control it because if you start getting emotional when you're driving you can forget it. People came up to me afterwards and said fifth was great but come on. What are you talking about? Of course fifth isn't great. It's nothing. Fifth is nothing. I came here to win. Okay, you look back and think you had a big accident. Now you're back racing. But so what? That's history now. I want to think about the future. I want to win and fifth is not good enough unquote. And that says a great deal about Hakenon's mentality, doesn't it Matt? It really does. And it helps to explain the extraordinary ways career developed over the next few seasons. Indeed so and that's what we'll talk about after our final ad break. Welcome back. We're in 1996 now, a season dominated by the battle for the World Championship between the two Williams drivers, Damon Hill and Jack Villeneuve and Ferrari's Michael Schumacher. But behind them, Mika Hakenon was getting on with the job of reestablishing himself in F1. And by the end of the season he had four third places to show for his efforts at Silverstone, Spa, Monza and Suzuka, all super quick tracks and fifth place in the final drivers' standings. Matt, do you think he was a different driver after the crash? Maybe more mature? Maybe he was, yeah. And maybe this is the time to bring this up because in the next few years, in other words 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000 and 2001, during those seasons of course, which he raced and won so much and so often, always in McLaren's, I got to know him very well. I was the editor of F1 Racing magazine at the time and Mika's manager, Keke Rosberg, and Didier Koton, who was also a key part of Rosberg management by that time, became good mates of mine. And obviously I wanted my magazine, F1 Racing, to run big feature interviews with Mika because he was becoming a Megastar. And I wrote one particular interview with him in 1997, I think it was, that not only Mika, but also Keke and Didier and indeed even Ron seemed to like. So they began to insist that all F1 Racing's Mika Hacken and interviews had to be written by me. I mean, to be quite clear, that was just lucky for me, I guess. I mean, undoubtedly my F1 Racing colleagues could have written just as well about him as I did or indeed better. You probably would say they would have written better. I'm not saying it would. Anyway, but there were wonderful writers at F1 Racing at that time, great colleagues such as Peter Windsor, Tom Clarkson, Oli Pee Game, Dom Taylor, Stefan Sampson, and of course the late Alan Henry and so on. They all would have written just as well as I did about Hacken and but that was the deal, the condition that they, Keke, Didier and Ron stipulated before giving our magazine interviews with their flying fin. So we went along with it. As a result, in the late 90s and early 2000s, I spent a lot of time with Mika. I did feature interviews with him at Grand Prix, yes, of course I did, but also in between races at various times in many countries and I've actually totted them up. These are interviews I did away from Grand Prix, away from racetracks in the UK of course, but also France, Germany, Austria, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Russia, Finland, Malaysia, China and New Zealand. More or less whenever he went on a promotional trip for a McLaren sponsor, I usually tagged along as well, went along too and I took the opportunity to interview him. It was great. I was so lucky. I mean, journalists now who might be listening to this informal one would be so envious. It was just so much easier in those days. So of course I got to know Mika very well during that time and his first wife, Eria too. And you know, he was generally seen by many formal one journalists at that time as a bit dim, but they were very wrong about that. He was very far from dim, rather he was shy. But as I gradually found out, he was also very, very intelligent. Now I said I was going to tell you about my visit to his log cabin, 120 miles, 190 kilometers, north of Helsinki in 2004, didn't I? Oh, you did and I've spent the last hour or half hour or something like that. It seems very long anyway. Looking forward to this moment. Yes, I've noticed you chemping at the bit. That's one way of putting it. Well, here goes. I arrived with actually with a fashion and showbiz portrait photographer with me, name of Andy Earl, who in his youth had briefly been a mechanic for James Hunt in his former afford days, small world, isn't it? And Mika said, "We'll do the interview tomorrow. Tonight we'll all have dinner together." It was just the four of us, Mika, Eria, his wife, Andy and me. And neither Mika nor Eria had met Andy before, of course. But when I told Mika that Andy had been a mechanic for James Hunt in his former afford days, he immediately accepted him as one of us. We ate our remember reindeer steaks. I've never had them before. We ate reindeer steaks cooked by the Hakkinen's chef. Delicious. And I brought a magnum of fine claret with me. But Mika, I did suspiciously, said thank you, put it on the kitchen counter and announced we're drinking vodka tonight. There you go. Proper thin. Proper thin. And we did. Oh my god. We did. We didn't touch the claret, but we sunk a lot of vodka. Anyway, after a while, Eria went to bed and we three continued to get stuck into the vodka well into the early hours. The next morning, we all had bad hangovers. Mika said, "Before we do the interview and the photo shoot, let's have a go in my rally car on my frozen lake." I mean, not everybody can say that. You know, what an extraordinary thing to say. Anyway, sure enough, we walked outside to a vista that I hadn't seen in daylight before, because we arrived after dark at the night before. And in front of us was a huge, absolutely level, frozen lake on which Mika had marked out a circuit with cones. And yes, a group in E36 BMW M3 rally car. Talk about how the other half lived. Anyway, he made me drive it first, which was a bit of an ordeal, particularly hung over and with a rather good driver as a passenger, because he was sitting next to me. I was rubbish. Let's just be absolutely clear. I was absolutely rubbish. It was impossible, Richard, honestly, there was no grip at all. I mean, we were on ice for goodness sake. And snow, I was bashing the cones on almost every turn. He was pissing himself, laughing. Anyway, then we swapped seats, and while we chatted and joked, and he complained about his sore head, he did the whole lap, or laps, he did a few laps, not only far, far, far, far faster than I'd even attempted them, but also in a series of perfect power slides, never more than a couple of inches offline. Well, sideways everywhere, but always in complete control. He made it look so easy. It was extraordinary. And it really, it's at times like that that you realize that these people have skills that you wouldn't even know where to look for, let alone try to master yourself. Well, what a wonderful experience, but you know, don't beat yourself up about it, Matt. I mean, but he know how to. He uses any colon. He probably might struggle with that, but I know which skill I'd probably rather have. Anyway, on with our story, Hacken and scored his maiden Formula One Grand Prix win at Hereth in 1997, as we've already said. The next race, which was the first Grand Prix of the 1998 Formula One season, was in Melbourne. Make a one that one too. But both those wins had been facilitated in different ways by his teammate, Coolthard. And I don't think, sorry if you're listening, DC, but I don't think DC ever really got over that. It certainly niggled him. And certainly, once the 1998 season got going, and it became clear that the McLaren MP413 was a great car, the driver who really hooked it up was Mika, not Mika. David, I mean, don't get me wrong. David won one Grand Prix in 1998, but Mika won eight. And I'd like to quote Martin Brundel here, if I may, because he'd been a Formula One teammate of both Mika Hacken and at McLaren and Michael Schumacher at Beneton. And I think we can agree that Michael and Mika were the two greatest drivers of their shared era. Would you go along with that? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And as Brundel's quote, as follows, if Michael Schumacher and Mika Hacken and were in the same Formula One team with the same equipment during qualifying in the dry, and you asked me to state, my kids building society accounts on who'd bagged the poll, I'd put my money on Mika, but Michael would win the race. Unquote. Do you agree with that Richard? Yeah, that's pretty true, doesn't it? As you'd expect from that source. It is. Martin has always known how many racing beans make five, which is what makes him such a great commentator. But Mika wasn't super fast only as a result of his freakish talent, although he was freakishly talented. No doubt about that. No, in addition to that, he was also a very technical driver, which not a lot of people give him credit for. I mean, honestly, he was very technically capable. He thought a lot more carefully about the technique of his incoct pit approach than he usually led on. His poll app at Monaco in 1998, for instance, was a technical masterpiece. And the reason I mention it is that I once asked him to describe it for me for a feature article. Obviously, the article is too long to read all of, to read all of what he told me now in a podcast context, sadly. But if you'll permit me, I'll read his descriptions of Sant DeVote and the swimming pool. Is that okay? Go ahead. Okay, here goes. Quote. For the first corner, Sant DeVote, I had a plan. I break to tiny bit earlier than usual and very hard on a short and ever so slightly downhill section of the track in order to pitch the weight of my car forward, so as to immediately heat my front tires to their operational maximum. That way, I figured I could forcibly generate the front end bite that I always loved in a race car. I always hated understeer, you see. I was always at my best in a car that I could throw at the apex, catching and recaaching its rear end as I did so, so as to ping that apex with just a few degrees of sideways attitude, deliberately dialed in. So as to set my car up for an early and fast exit, power on, foot to the floor. You can't do that with understeer. You can't do that with a front end that you can't lean on, in other words. But on that Monaco 1998 quality lap, I was pleased to find that my tactic had worked. I released the brakes a tiny bit early, I turned the wheel and the car followed my command accurately. I generated and I'd instantly benefited from the front end bite that I so loved. I got the power down early and well and I began my charge up the hill towards Masone and Casino Square. Unquote. And now I'll skip forward to the swimming pool. Quote. The swimming pool entry is incredibly quick. You break at about 240 km/h, which I suppose is about 150 mph, back to heckin' it and you have to really punish your car to be really quick there. As you pitch your car left towards the first part of the turn, it's a left, right, flick, flick. You aim for the apex arm co-on your right. You ride the apex curb as you do so. You miss the wall on your right by a few centimetres, then you floor the accelerator earlier than seems sensible or even possible. There's something odd about the track surface there you see. If you hesitate, your car can become unsettled. Instead, you absolutely have to get the power down hard and fast so as to load up your rear tyres and prevent them from sliding. It's not easy to do, but you have to do it if you want to be proper quick there, so you have to dial in the power early, lots of power. And as soon as you've done that, you instantly know whether you've got it right or not. And if you have, then there's no better sensation for a Formula One driver, none at all. In 1998, on that quality lap, I got it just right. After that, I began to feel really good. The last few corners passed in a blur, in fact, but I remember taking them all absolutely flat out. Maximum attack. Maximum attack is how you almost always have to drive at the end of a quality lap anyway. Drive like an animal as fast as you can, taking everything out of the car. After all, there's no point finishing a quality lap with anything left of your tyres, is there. Across the line, my time flashed up, 1 minute 19.798 seconds. Pole position. Unquote. Amazing. Absolutely fascinating. Although it didn't seem to say anything there about turning right after turning left in the first part of the swimming pool, so I reckoned it's in the wall. You're so hard to please Richard. I don't need a bump poles. I think he must have tackled the turn properly. I don't know if you ever did what I'm used to do at Monaco, which was Getter Photographer's Tabar, which allowed you to go and stand by the Armco barrier. I used to go to the swimming pool, you know, you stand between the two corners at the swimmers. By the Louis-Chamerar statue. Exactly so. Yes. You see them coming through the first bit and there is nothing quite as awe in Spider-Dark. I don't know. I think it's so quick and so close to the wall. So precise. And you just, even the bad ones, a quick, yes. But the good ones are simply my god. And honestly, you know, for people like us, you know, who have devoted our lives really to our passion for motorsport and former one in particular, you know, being able to stand there with a photographer's tabarron is an unbelievable privilege. And I often used to think even well into my, I'm 62 now, but well into my 50s when I used to go and watch from there, precisely there. I used to think I am standing in a place that reminds me why I fell in love with this sport when I was seven years old. Yeah. And if you want to hear noise, go and do the same thing in the tunnel. Oh my goodness. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I will say about, you know, that ability of mickers to strategize technically a poll lap is that, and he was a great qualifier. He was a great racer, but he was also a great qualifier is that he used to visualize it in his imagination with his eyes closed in real time. And he would go into a room, quiet on his own, shut his eyes, but begin to move his hands and his feet as if he was turning the wheel and breaking and accelerating and flick his fingers as if he was operating the paddles for the gear shift. And he would practice it with his eyes shut in real time. And you know when he did that, he would usually begin and end that practice within a couple of tents of the actual time he'd on track, remarkable ability to visualize. Yeah. Yeah. He scorched the title in 1998 with eight wins to Schumacher's six, and they went toe-to-toe again in 1999 until Michael crashed and broke his leg at Silverstone. Michael's Ferrari was actually taken over by the other Mika, Mika Sallow, Hakenon's boyhood neighbour, for the next six races. Michael came back for the last two rounds. And in the final race at Suzuki, he finished second to Hakenon, but his challenge to Mika was long gone, and it was his teammate Eddie Irvine who finished second in the championship table. Eddie was just two points behind Hakenon who'd only managed to win five races just over half the number of the year before. The car wasn't quite as good, was it, man? I guess it wasn't. No, but it was good enough. You know, he did win the World Championship. Having said that, if Michael hadn't injured himself at Silverstone that year, 1999, he'd probably have been World Champion that year, wouldn't he? Yes, I should think so. And then in 2000, with Michael Back to full fitness and with a really good Ferrari, the defending champion, Miko, was on the back foot straight away. Michael won the first three races and finished off by winning the last four with two more wins in between. Miko won only four, but one of them, Sparr, included an incident that ranks among the most thrilling single moments in the entire history of Formula One racing and it featured the two main rivals for the Champions League. Come on, tell us about it because I'm. It's a favourite of mine, so. Well, Miko started from pole, but lost the lead to Michael's Ferrari when he had a spin on a track that was still damp from rain in the morning. But with four laps to go, Miko was closing right back up on the Ferrari and first he tried to pass as they went along the camel straight between Radion and Le Com, jinking out of the Ferrari slipstream at 190 miles an hour and trying to overtake on the right. Schumacher saw him coming and responded by chopping across him and Miko had to back off. Next time round, at the same spot, they found they were coming up to lap Ricardo Zonta's B.A.R. Just what Miko needed. When he fainted to go left this time, Schumacher tried to block him again, but in an instant Miko switched and went right. Suddenly, and for no more than a second, perhaps less, Zonta was in the middle of 190 miles an hour's sandwich. Schumacher on his left, Hakkan on his right. The McLaren was first into the right hander at Le Com, and that, as they say, was all she wrote. Yes. And if that didn't get you out of your chair in front of the telly, which is where I was, nothing could. What would you compare that to, Matt? Remind me of a bit of Fangio chasing down the Ferraris, Collins and Hawthorne, at the Nürburgring in 1957. Or maybe closer to our time, Mansoul diving inside Nelson Pique is Williams' teammate into Stoke Horner at Silverstone in 1987. Similarly, hair raising. Similarly hair raising, yes. Also, you mentioned Mansoul. What about Mansoul in Hungary in 1989? Kimi Reikonen in Japan in 2005, and even more recently, Jensen Button in Canada in 2011, where one and overtook Sebastian Vettel in the Red Bull on the very last lap, having been stone-last at one time. One of my favourite races, of course I was working from a McLaren at the time. Anyway, all of those were fantastic chase downs if we can call them that. But judged purely as one single overtaking maneuver, a split second moment of opportunistic vision, supreme skill, fantastic car control on a damp track offline, and sheer indomitable courage. It's the greatest racing move I've ever seen. I'm talking about Hakken and its bar in 2000. Courage that to an outside observer appears to shade into madness. You would have to touch it, but I'm sure he knew exactly what he was doing. Well, you were at home for that. I was sitting in the spa media centre next to my friend and fellow journalist Peter Windsor, who I've mentioned earlier in this podcast and whom we've often spoken of in previous episodes of Colossally, actually. Anyway, together Peter and I sat side by side, glued to the TV and data screens in front of us, in numbed silence I must say, because we were reeling from the shock triggered in us by the ruthlessness of Michael's high speed chop that I've had before. Which, let's be honest, had been extremely dangerous, but that was Michael sadly, brilliant driver though he was. Anyway, as Schumacher and Hakken and Rounded Las Orcs, as they began the fast run, the next lap, up through O Rouge and the radio to Le Com once again, in line a stern, Peter turned to me and said, "I bet Mika doesn't pass him. I bet he does," I replied. And as you've described, Richard, of course, we now know that Hakken indeed indeed passed Schumacher and Zonta too, in a move that's rightly gone down in racing folklore as one of the greatest ever former one overtaking maneuvers. After the race, I spoke to Mika, as I often did in those days after races. He was absolutely delighted with his win and with his overtake, understandably, but he was still actually quite a bit angry about what Michael had done on the previous lap. In Park Fermé, the two men had spoken. It was recorded and you can see photographs of them in earnest discussion. Anyway, that conversation had come about at Hakken's instigation and the subject had been the near cataclysm, the near crash, not the spectacular overtake. And Mika told me, I think he told me off the record at the time, but it is 25 years ago, that his exact words had been, "Don't try that on me ever again." Anyway, afterwards, in Schumacher's post-brace press conference and TV interviews, he denied that there had been contact on the previous lap. Hakken and was privately adamant that there had been. And eight years later, by which time I joined McLaren as the team's comms and PR chief, I was shown the front wing in plate from Hakken and's car, which Martin Wittmarsh had retained as a keepsake. It was broken and flecked with tire marks left by Schumacher's rear bridge stone. So when he went past him, it was with a broken front wing and plate. Amazing. It was. Bent and deranged anyway. Yes. Still, Mika had to settle for the runner-up slot in the championship that year after a poor finish to the season. And in 2001, it was actually David Kulffard, who mounted the biggest challenge to Schumacher. The McLaren pair won two races each, to Michael's nine, but DC's much better finishing record gave him second place in the final standings to Mika's fifth. Mika had started the season with a crash in Australia, where he was running second to Schumacher when his front suspension broke and the car hit the barrier backwards. And he was concussed by flying debris. Before the Italian Grand Prix, a few months later, he made a big announcement. He and his wife had a small son Hugo and he was going to take the next season off so that he could spend more time with them. He said that the accident at Melbourne, following the big one at Adelaide in '95, had been on his mind. And at Monaco in '2002, he told Ron Dennis that he decided to make his sabbatical permanent. So after 161 Grand Prix, 26 pole positions, 25 fastest laps, 20 wins and two world championships, he was no longer an F1 driver. The decision was announced to the world a few weeks later. He was 33 and you'd have to imagine that but for those two crashes in Australia and particularly the first of them, his career would have lasted longer, but at least he went out in one piece. And it's a decision he stuck to over the following couple of years in the face of tempting offers from Williams, B.A.R. and of course Ron Dennis. So we'll always think of him in those handsome silver and black west sponsored McLaren's, fighting it out with Michael Schumacher at the front of a hugely competitive era in Grand Prix racing. We will indeed. And I'll also always think of him as a thoroughly good bloke. And that feels like a good place to say. And colossally, that's history. And to wrap up our episode on Micka Hackenon, the driver who cheated death to win not one but two Formula One drivers world championships. We're not going to do a questions section on this week's episode because we're saving our question answering for our forthcoming members only Q&A episode, which you'll be able to listen to if you join the Race Members Club on Patreon. If you'd like to ask a follow-up question about Micka Hackenon, just head to patreon.com/thorace and sign up to the Race Members Club. There's tons for you to enjoy over there, including ad free access to all our shows and a load of bonus content. And what's more, throughout May, we're giving you 75% off your first month of access as part of F1's 75th anniversary celebrations. And remember, if you'd like to drop us a line, you can get in touch via [email protected] or you can contact us via social media. I'm at the Bischeef1 and Richard is at our Williams 1947. And that's it for this week. Until next time, with thanks to our producer, Johnny Reynolds and to you for listening. It's goodbye from me and it's goodbye from him. [Music] The Athletic.