MIKA HÄKKINEN & EDDIE IRVINE Doing A Crossword Puzzle At The 1990 MACCU GRAND PRIX

#Mika #Michael

Since this website likes to flag every photoset I make, Makkinen shirtless compilation!

Formula Super A European Championship 1995. The last race at Genk, JB wins the championship, finishing 3rd.

(life to the limit, ch. 18)

Mika Hakkinen retrieved from his car following a big crash in Adelaide, 1995 (x)

“I remember being in the wall. I couldn’t move my legs and arms, I couldn’t focus. I thought, OK Mika, just relax, don’t fight it, don’t panic, everything is going to be OK. Then I was gone, I don’t remember any more.” (...) Eventually Mika was lifted into an ambulance and taken to the Royal Adelaide where his head was scanned – among other injuries, he had a fractured skull – and he was placed in intensive care. He regained consciousness the next day. “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 and a big smile, and I thought she must be an angel. Then I saw Ron standing next to her, and I thought, OK, I am not in heaven yet." “Then the hell started because I was in hospital in Australia for weeks. The doctors did a great job, and I know they saved my life where the accident happened, but 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 was it 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.’ It wasn’t, ‘Will I be able to race again?’ It was, ‘Will I ever be able to live a normal life?’ “Finally I was able to walk in the garden, carrying my drip bottles, my head shaved like some bloody hooligan. I tried to look at things, the weather, the trees, the birds, but all I could think about was my next dose of painkillers. But I had great support from everybody, my girlfriend, my parents, my manager Didier Coton. My fitness trainer stayed all the time, because I didn’t want to be alone at night.”

The whole recovery was difficult. I really had to fight every day to get back, physically and psychologically. Soon I started running, even though I was still getting massive headaches. I knew I was getting better and better, and eventually Prof said, ‘OK Mika, you can do a test.’ I still had problems with my face and with my hearing – I’d had a couple of ear operations – but I went to Paul Ricard.” It was Monday February 5th, 87 days after the accident. “When I arrived everything was friendly, but I saw how the mechanics looked at me. I tried to behave like the normal Mika, but I knew they were thinking, ‘He won’t be able to do it, he’ll have to go back home.’ I thought, I’m going to show these guys, I’m coming back to win. When I got in the car I felt, this is my home, this is my office, and I went for it.” He did 63 laps, the best of which was half a second faster than Schumacher’s Ferrari had done the previous day. “I finished the test, said to the mechanics, ‘It’s fine. Pack up the car, take it back to England. I’ll see you in Melbourne.’”

Mika Hakkinen, 2010 (x)

Mika talks about his rivalry with Mika Salo during the British F3 Series, 1990.

Russian Grand Prix post-race press conference with Lewis Hamilton, Sebastian Vettel and Sergio Perez (2015)

#Mika

Just a medic making sure Mika isn't hiding any boo-boos after a crash.

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.

HUH!?

#Mika #Keke #Nico

“Eleven months later, Hakkinen was once more heading down a cul-de-sac when the contract he had signed to drive for Williams proved to be worthless. Again, [Keke] Rosberg instigated the rescue by securing a meeting two days before Christmas with McLaren’s Ron Dennis, who was skiing in the French Alps. Rosberg dashed across the mountains to meet his old boss against the worrying background of a mystery illness to his young son, Nico. But that late-night rendezvous at the small airport at Courchevel was critical to Hakkinen’s destiny. […] ‘I’d first gone to him [Ron Dennis] with Mika before Christmas 1992. We had a signed contract with Williams, but Lotus objected that Mika was still under contract to them. In the end, Frank pulled out and, eventually, paid us damages. ‘After Ligier messed us around, I called Ron. We arranged to meet, even though my son, Nico, was ill with a blood disease.’ […] He returned to his family to spend that troubled Christmas at Nico’s side and this afternoon he will be with his son, now 13, as he races in the Italian kart championship.”

— from “Schumacher can’t bully my man Mika”, 30th August 1998 (x)

#Mika

SHIONOGI 1991

what are they doing？🤤