For My Fellow Davika Girlies❤️

just three gays guys when they were young 🫶

MICHAEL and MIKA during a Karting Championship in Liedolsheim, Germany 1986.

every now and then i remember about the häkkinen/schumacher rainbow cover for the 36th issue of autosprint that came out in the 2000 and i'm like "what the hell, why not"

also the title is a reference to the movie "Trading Places" (in italian they changed the name to "Una poltrona per due" ["An armchair for two"]).

MIKA HÄKKINEN & EDDIE IRVINE doing a crossword puzzle at the 1990 MACCU GRAND PRIX

#Nico #Seb

Chinese Grand Prix 2016 cool-down room. everyone remembers the iconic seb blowing up at kyvat but before that he actually congratulates nico in german, needs to get his attention like 4 times. (there's also a longstanding belief that nico spoke in german in cooldown rooms only to mind game lewis, but it's actually seb who would start speaking to nico in german first)

rough translation because nico's voice is muffled and seb swallows half his words:

seb: (FOUR TIMES) nico, you won't be able to sleep tonight huh? - you won't be able to sleep tonight, 'cause you're so well rested - I said, you won't be able to sleep tonight, you're so well rested, it was so quiet up front/you were so untroubled up front...

nico: something was possible today lol

and then seb turns to kyvat to yell at him in English 😭😭 (and here's Nico's reaction)

Mika Hakkinen | 1987 [x]

#Makkinen

1994 Belgian Grand Prix

Jenson is literally the capybara of the 00s-10s F1 they put that man with the most mentally unhinged competitors and teammates and he was chill. He was like the dogs they give to cheetahs in zoos to calm them down except it was him, one dog, and 22 cheetahs.

Mika Häkkinen recalls a press conference at the Kalastajatorpa in Helsinki in late 1990 and says it was an emotional moment. "It was also a memorable event for Keke, who had been able to pull off such a feat," says Häkkinen, referring to his manager at the time, 1982 Formula One World Champion Keke Rosberg.

Rosberg had managed to lure the 22-year-old Häkkinen to the British Lotus F1 team. This was a sensational achievement, as Häkkinen was promoted to the top of the Formula 3 championship straight from Formula 3. According to the normal marching order, he should have entered the F3000 class first and then the top one.

The young Linnanmäki Circus School brat made his F1 debut in Phoenix, USA, in the spring of 1991. "I remember lying alone on a hotel bed and wondering. The whole scene seemed impossibly labyrinthine. Where do I start to unravel it and who do I talk to about it?"

The world of Formula One began to show Häkkinen its harsher side in the winter of 1992-1993, by which time he had already been offered a place in the Williams stable as a partner to Alain Prost. It turned out that the team had not entered Häkkinen for the World Championship in time. Häkkinen was sidelined and Prost was replaced by the team's test driver Damon Hill.

Häkkinen believes, however, that the team bumped him out deliberately. "There was all sorts of mess behind the process. I just can't go into it here."

After the Williams scandal, Häkkinen was offered a dream job at McLaren. Now he would be under his belt.

Now he would have a winner's car under his belt. But just a week before the season opener in Kyalam, South Africa, the Finn's skies fell. When Brazilian superstar Ayrton Senna decided to continue in the McLaren team alongside American Michael Andretti, Häkkinen was dropped as a test driver.

"It was a terrible disappointment. When we went to Kyalam, I had to buy sunglasses at the airport: I was so ashamed I couldn't look people in the eye." (I'M CRYIN LMFAAAOOOO)

Häkkinen soon learned that the stakes in Formula One are high behind the scenes. He doesn't claim to have been cheated or abused, but he has experienced how easily he can be stabbed in the back in those circles.

"But that's life in other professions. In our leisure time we can choose our mates, but it's different at work. At work, you have to get along with everyone. You just have to take the best out of each person and leave the negatives aside."

"The most important thing is that those who are responsible for their organisation know each of their employees inside out and know how they feel about their work. We all have bad days sometimes, and that's why the job of those in charge is tough. But there is no alternative. You have to take care of people and give them time."

The world of Formula One is an exceptionally tough place to live because everyone, especially the drivers, are scrutinised under a magnifying glass. If you're successful, there's a queue of friends, but if you're not, there's a double queue of pushers.

The older generation remembers how much Keke Rosberg was starved in Finland in the early 1980s. He was derided as a swaggering upstart who talked tough but couldn't handle the track.

Häkkinen was subjected to the same kind of dirty journalism in his first years in F1. To top it all off, a Finnish journalist stuck his tape recorder into the mouth of a tired and adrenaline-addled Häkkinen immediately after the race and extracted all his stammering and stuttering into his story.

After Rosberg won the world championship, he paid the price in kicks and took it in turns to bark at all the journalists who were bashing him. Häkkinen chose the other way:

"Of course, the mockery writings had a negative effect. But I thought they were always the work of one person, and when I can't control everyone, there's no point in explaining anything. I just wanted to be as open as possible and handle it as well as I could."

The world of formula racing can also be a dangerous place. Or has anyone forgotten how the Italian GP in Imola in May 1994 turned black? First Roland Ratzenberger of Austria died in qualifying and then Ayrton Senna on race day.

"Although it was horrible and incomprehensible, I don't want to sugarcoat or distort the truth: if you are an F1 driver, on race weekend you have to eliminate all your emotions. How you react later is another matter. When I got home from Imola to Monaco, I sat down and lit a candle. That's when the tears came."

Häkkinen's own life almost ended on the Adelaide circuit in Australia in November 1995. When a rear tyre burst, the car went out of control and plunged into a guardrail at 180 km/h. Häkkinen suffered a fractured skull and serious neck injuries. He was conscious for a few minutes before falling into a coma.

After recovering, he said that the accident had changed his life. "I started to realise that I don't have to think about winning all the time and that I don't have to think of the race car as the pole of the world. Now I have to think about life and make the most of the positive aspects of it. You have to live life."

Friends, comrades. "In our leisure time we can choose our friends, but it's different at work. At work, you have to get along with everyone."

Three years after the Adelaide accident, in November 1998, Häkkinen secured his first Formula One world championship at the Suzuka circuit in Japan. It was quite a life-changing event too.

"I probably didn't change outwardly, but in my head I changed even more. I felt like a mountaineer who had tried to reach the summit of Mount Everest. Sometimes you'd fallen down, sometimes you'd climbed up, and now that you'd got there and raised the flag, there was nothing left to prove."

The following year, Häkkinen took his second championship. The season turned out to be more difficult than the previous one, as the McLaren car became more difficult to drive due to rule changes.

"The championship came, but it was a razor's edge the whole time. Ferrari started to push harder and harder, and going into 2000, things were not looking good at all. It was getting slippery at the top of the mountain. Now it was just a case of seeing which side you fell on."

At the end of the 2001 season, Häkkinen decided to take a year off. However, the sabbatical extended to a second year and soon to a third.

The man's manners changed. He started smoking cigarettes at almost the same rate as Keke Rosberg in his prime, and he enjoyed a wet dinner party almost as much as the 1976 F1 champion James Hunt did. And he got fat. He didn't swell up to the dimensions of 1980 champion Alan Jones, but he was clearly overweight.

"After my career I was bouncing around, and in the end it wasn't good for anybody. But I try to look on the bright side and think that you have to learn from your mistakes."

Häkkinen had already had time to take it on the chin when he received a call from the soul of the Williams team, Frank Williams. Sir Frank asked if Häkkinen would come to drive for his F1 team for the 2005 season. "I started to think seriously about a comeback. It wasn't going to be easy and that's why I started training harder than ever."

Häkkinen believes that with his pace, he could have returned to the premier class and still risen to the top. But no deal was struck. One reason was that Häkkinen asked for too much money.

"Money was only one reason. The second and bigger reason was the feeling I got during the contract negotiations. It is important to me that everyone involved always does everything possible to achieve a common goal. Now that feeling was missing."

After the negotiations broke down, Häkkinen left to drive in the DTM series. He says he did so mainly for the pleasure of Mercedes-Benz and German fans. "I went to enjoy myself. I got pole positions and some wins, but of course you don't win the championship with that attitude."

In this day. "It's good to remember your history, but you don't have to stare at it every day. You have to live life."

In May 2008, a fire broke out at Häkkinen's holiday home in Provence, France. It raged in the three-storey, more than 800-square-metre pyting for so long that most of the furniture and furnishings were destroyed.

"After the fire was extinguished, I walked through the house. I looked at the mess and said to myself, 'Now you, Mika, have got a tough one on your hands. How are you going to turn this into something positive? After all, all the prizes you've won in your career were destroyed there."

"Suddenly I realised that everything the fire had taken was history. It's good to remember history, but you don't have to stare at it every day. Now it was time to look forward. And besides, I shouldn't have brought those trophies into the living room. They should have been in the garage."

The house was renovated and now it's more handsome than ever.

In the same year as the fire, Häkkinen also divorced his wife Erja. The couple have two children together, who live in Monaco a couple of hundred metres from their father's apartment block. His father now has a Czech wife, Markéta, with whom he has three children. He answers all questions about his private life by saying that "we are on good terms and have things under control in every respect".

He refuses to boast about his wealth. He says it would be in bad taste if "at a time like this, when more and more Finns are having to compromise on their standard of living, someone like Häkkinen were to start spending his own money".

"But if you say that a F1 driver today earns €30 or €40 million a year, that's absolutely wrong. It should be doubled immediately to reflect the real market value of the driver."

In Finland, it is estimated that Mr Häkkinen earned 100 million marks in his first year in the championship. Today, such a sum would be worth around €23 million. Mr Häkkinen does not comment on the figures. He simply says that he was fortunate in that he was able to drive for a stable that was financially sound and that he was given a relatively free hand in salary negotiations. "I knew my market value and priced myself accordingly."

As for how he manages his fortune, he says he has invested in "a luxury travel business" and "an internet company", among other things. He has also invested in shares in listed companies.

Excerpt from Kauppalehtiio Optio on 1.10.2015.

#mika

I'M FUCKIGN CRYIGGGG