#Mika #Michael

For my fellow davika girlies❤️

Why do I even do this shit to myself??

It was at this moment...

That I knew...

I fucked up.

Kids.

#Nico

Nico juggling :)

#Mika

March 7, 1996 - Melbourne, Australia Source: Pascal Rondeau/Allsport

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.

Hyperfixation Corner: A Special  | Oops!… They Did It Again - The Friendship of Jenson Button and Nico Rosberg

let me break the ice: on one side of the party, there was jenson button, daddy-o, he had the swagger of a champion. on the other side, you had nico rosberg, mr. “lifestyle of the rich and famous” since a young fella. if you’ve seen them interacting, then they might make you believe that they’re more than just frineds. and yes, they might be retire, but it’s too late to give them up. i took a sip from the devil’s cup and slowly, they’re taking over me. love them, hate them, say what you want about them, but all of the boys and all of the girls are begging to if you seek jenson and nico. so, in this special edition of the hyperfixation corner, i won’t let you all be the last to know and we’re gonna go all the way from 2000 to today to establish what is going on there between princess cake.

britney songs aside, this is a quickie and not the hc i have been working on since we wrapped 1982. uni and sinusitis have taken over me but that one is done. it’s weird to explain. however, i wanted to dedicate this to the people who probably know it’s dedicated to them, you guys are awesome and i love you all. and quick disclaimer, if you’re nico and you’re reading this: i love you even though you never drove for ferrari, don’t take this seriously pls. if you’re jenson and you’re reading this: i love you even though you never drove for ferrari… what is going on there?

继续阅读

#Mika

Michael Schumacher and Mika Häkkinen gossiping in the paddock, 1994.

Mika Hakkinen | 1987 [x]

MIKA HÄKKINEN at the 1991 MONACO GRAND PRIX

#Mika

hi could you explain to us why michael... obeyed mikka?? lol like young michael wouldn't be afraid to annoy the other drivers but with mikka he was always reserved

fsdjgfds okay so not to psychoanalyze a celebrity but. The thing to understand about michael - and this is key to everything - is that he had an absolutely rigid, unbreakable separation in his mind between the track and his personal life. Like to Michael, as soon as he was in the car that was another person with another goal, and I think Mika was the only person who ever really understood this and changed his approach accordingly to get Michael's respect in both areas. I think there are 3 main reasons Michael was more inclined to listen to Mika.

1- Damon Hill once said that Michael simply didn't understand that other people couldn't do what he did. To him, it was the other drivers' fault that they couldn't keep up with him and weren't prepared to push the limit as far as he was. To him, what he could do was normal and the other drivers were just not trying hard enough. So he didn't respect them and treated them accordingly on track. Mika understood that you had to take the fight to Michael, and he was one of only a handful of drivers who COULD take the fight to Michael. So you get moments like Spa 2000, where Michael is driving dirty and Mika - instead of backing down and cursing him like the others - reinvents the fucking overtake, picks the PRECISE spot where he can catch Michael out, and doesn't let Zonta or ANYTHING stop him. Michael loves racing for racing's sake, it's his passion. So he's not angry that Mika just HUMILIATED HIM. He's impressed, he's grinning through the podium and press, and he respects Mika for it. So when Mika tells him "don't do that again" about the defending Michael just did to him, Michael doesn't do that again. (To him anyway.) Because he knows Mika will just put his head down and counter it. It won't work.

2- When Michael bullied other drivers on track they were - understandably, rightly - furious with him off track. They talked shit about him in the press, they argued with him and each other about it. To Michael, this didn't make sense. Racing was not reality, and them holding grudges against him for things he did in the car made him lose respect for them. It also made him less inclined to actually patch things up, so their relationships only deteroriated and he cared even less what they had to say about his driving. Mika, on the other hand, arguably hated the press even more than Michael. He said the bare minimum to them. He was there to race, not talk to a camera. So he never talked shit to the press about Michael because... why? Why bother? If he had a problem he took it straight to Michael. So off track Michael also gained respect for Mika - and vice versa I think - because they let each other live in peace as soon as the helmet came off.

3- Just. The sheer amount of history he had with Mika compared to other drivers. They went way back. Mika was arguably one of the first drivers to get a taste of Michael's outrageous defending ruining his entire day. They were friendly WAY before they were actually racing each other on a regular basis. When Mika had his horrible accident and almost died - before they were even anything approaching Iconic Rivals - Michael visited him in the hospital very quickly, and Mika returned the favour when Michael had his worst crash at Silverstone. I think Michael, for all he expected others to rigidly separate the personal life and the track, sometimes slipped up himself. Defending too hard at Monza in 2011 because he was in front of the *tifosi* comes to mind. And I think his personal history with Mika, plus the massive reminder of Mika's mortality he received during their careers because of Mika's big crash, made him marginally more careful with Mika than he was with other drivers.

But then this is all speculation and me guessing really. It could have been as simple as Mika's bluntness got through to Michael sdhsfdhgfsd.