Latest Posts by cici0907 - Page 2

#Mika

SHELL 1994 CM Mika Häkkinen

#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)

#Nico

Papa Nico 💕

#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.

#Mika

lotus teammates mika hakkinen and johnny herbert | 1991 f1 season

#mika

Sporting rivalries: Michael Schumacher vs Mika Häkkinen

Ok but imagine racing each other from formula 3, rising through the ranks together to finally compete against their heroes, only to be the only two who witnessed Ayrton Senna's car spinning out to his death from their rearview mirrors as Imola 1994 forever became an intertwining bond between those that death seems to cheat.

Imagine going to compete for world championships together, breaking world records together, but still remaining the only competitor each other ever feared. Imagine having accepted their fate to always die on the track, mourning friends and peers who left them, leaving f1 irredeemably thankful for the lives they got to walk away with.

Imagine years later finding out about the accident, the comma, realising that maybe you two weren't the lucky ones anyway, and that perhaps it is the greater pain after all, to be the one left behind when the other is gone.

Michael Schumacher hanging out with Mika Häkkinen in their pre-F1 days

Michael Schumacher and Mika Häkkinen standing on the podium of the 1994 Imola race that killed their childhood hero, Ayrton Senna

Mika Häkkinen comforting a crying Michael Schumacher, who was told that with his win that day he has equalled Ayrton Senna's all-time records

Michael Schumacher and Mika Häkkinen celebrating their world championship wins together

After Michael Schumacher's decade-long comma inducing skiing accident, Mika Häkkinen wrote him a letter, asking him to keep fighting, and that he will wait for him for as long as he needs.

Their eternal Ferrari and McLaren racing through Spa, 2000.

#mika

I'M FUCKIGN CRYIGGGG

#Mika

1995 (X)

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.

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 at the 1991 MONACO GRAND PRIX

#mika

HUH!?

just three gays guys when they were young 🫶

Mika Häkkinen, 1997

makkinen

Keep ur war crime committing husband and chaos meow meow son in check

The 1997 Formula One season but its a sitcom

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

F1 drivers at the Independence Day Reception, annually hosted at the Presidential Palace on 6th of December

Mika Häkkinen

Kimi Räikkönen

Keke Rosberg

Keke & Sina Rosberg sparked controversy in 1986 with Sina wearing a suit and bowtie not far from his husband's style; on the contrary to the style etiquette of women having to wear gowns at the time. They later disappeared from the ball, leaving quite early.

++BONUS:

Sebastian (in Finnish): "It was a good day. Where's my invitation to the Palace? I'm almost a Finnish man."

June 14 1964 - Belgium / Innes Ireland gives a ride back to the pits to teammate Jo Siffert (x)

June 16, 1991 - Mexico City, Mexico / Ayrton Senna gives a ride to Jean Alesi (x)

July 14, 1991 - England / Nigel Mansell gives Ayrton Senna a ride back to the pits during his victory lap after Senna had run out of fuel (x)

May 30 1995 - Hockenheim, Germany / Mika Hakkinen hitches a lift back to the pits with Gerhard Berger (x)

July 30, 1995 - Hockenheim, Germany / David Coulthard gives a ride to Rubens Barrichello

July 28 1996 - Hockenheim, Germany / Gerhard Berger hitches a ride with teammate Jean Alesi (x)

July 27 1997 - Hockenheim, Germany / Michael Schumacher gives Giancarlo Fisichella a lift back to the pits (x)

April 29 2001 -  Barcelona, Spain / Mika Hakkinen catches a lift from David Coulthard (x)

July 24, 2011 in Nuerburg, Germany / Fernando Alonso gets a lift back to the pits from Mark Webber (x)

September 22, 2013 - Singapore, Singapore / Mark Webber is given a lift back to pits by Fernando Alonso after his engine blew up (x) 

Mika Hakkinen  1991

i posted the gif with the ayrton and mika part but so much happens in this video is unbelievable

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)

Yes Michael, why don't you just lean into him... Very subtle! 😏😏

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

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

Mika Hakkinen | 1987 [x]

Mika at the opening of the new helicopter platform of the Royal Adelaide Hospital which he helped fund.

That he did 🤭 I'm not Finnish so this is not a great translation I think, but he said it a bit earlier in the video and I had it clipped too. @flatoutin-eaurouge

race winner sebastian vettel is interviewed during the post-race press conference, japan - october 10, 2010 (transcript under the cut)

Interviewer: "The top three drivers in the 2010 Formula 1 Japanese Grand Prix. In third place, for Scuderia Ferrari Marlboro, Fernando Alonso; in second place, for Red Bull Racing, Mark Webber; and taking the win for Red Bull Racing in the team's third 1-2 of the season, Sebastian Vettel. Seb, last season, pole and the win. This year, pole and the win, and all n the space of just one day." Seb: "Yeah. Incredible day, obviously, this morning with qualifying and the pole position, and this afternoon we just continued, so fantastic. I think it was down to the team. They have been working very hard. Most of the guys, they didn't sleep from Thursday to Saturday, so actually was good that there was no quali so they didn't have to touch the car and then cut some sleep, and I think they deserve it today. Obviously this track is, like, drawn for us. With all the high-speed corners it's always a pleasure, and with the car getting lighter and lighter in the end it's just more and more fun, and yeah, incredible. Good start, which was obviously the key from the clean side, and I could see Robert obviously got a bit of momentum, but the way down to turn one was too short for him. And then with the safety car, which stayed out quite long, obviously, with the incident with Kubica… But then after that I think both of us were able to pull away from the field and just controlling the pace until the end. There was a little bit of a rest behind Jenson because we couldn't really go through him, so we had to wait until he pits, but after that, just incredible. So really, really happy, and it's about time." [laughs] Interviewer: "You looked to have the race pretty much under control from the off, but Mark was putting you under some serious pressure after the pit stops, wasn't he?" Seb: "Yeah, I mean, obviously in his position he tries to push. I know that overtaking is not so easy and obviously… I think I just went as fast as I had to. Obviously I could see that we were pulling away. I was mainly given the pace Fernando was doing for the majority of the race. Obviously I can see Mark when he's about one, two, three seconds behind, so [laughs] as I said, obviously with Button in the middle after the pit stop halfway through the race we had to, yeah, back off a bit, and then once he pulled obviously it was free fast to go. But, as you said, it was pretty much controlled until the end, so just trying to carry the car home. But still you want to push every single lap because the car is magnificent around here. Just feels fantastic, so really happy." Interviewer: "Congratulations. Well done." [time jump] Interviewer: "Back to you. You're now tied for second in the championship. Only two drivers have ever taken back-to-back wins at suzuka other than yourself-Mika Häkkinen and Michael Schumacher-and they both went on to win the title. It's a pretty good omen." Seb: "I guess! I wouldn't mind, obviously. No, I'm very proud. I love this circuit. It's always special to come here. The fans, I think, the atmosphere for all of us is special. And yeah, it's the first time I win a grand prix for the second time, so I think ultimately you have to fall in love with this track. And yeah, very proud, so as you say. Think that's a good omen, so I wouldn't mind." [laughs] Interviewer: "Thank you very much, guys. Congrats."