No doubt Kovi was the beyotch. But in addition to everything else already said above, he also needs to remember that he was McLaren's, what, 3rd or 4th choice for that seat?

Kovi is good enough for F1, but not good enough for a top seat, and I think that's the long and short of it.

No surprise there. Second class car the guy and then whip him cause he's not performing up to snuff.

Seems like F1 has some kind of grudge against the Finns.

Maybe Heikki and Kimi should buy there own team and have at it

Well, what a surprise!


Indeed, I did talk of unequal treatment of the drivers at McLaren last year. I see this as an invitation to do so again


I agree that it was unrealistic to expect McLaren to treat Heikki equal to Lewis. But you know what. A big thing bugging me last year was that McLaren claimed they are treating Heikki equal to Lewis! When even the worms living under my house could tell that cannot be true.

And you know what? McLaren (Martin Whitmarsh) advertised equal treatment in December 2007 when they had announced Heikki's deal with McLaren.

I took it as they were not being honest towards Heikki and towards the fans, us. That did piss me off a little bit. If you are not going to treat him equally, say it, and not be such a hypocrite like you were.

I saw a conflict between what Mclaren was saying and what I saw happen. At first, when the season started, I shrugged it off like it was normal and there is no reason to be worried about it because Heikki's speed was very good. This was when Heikki was indeed matching or even bettering Lewis' speed in qualifying and race. Then they started to explain the heavy fuel loads with the danger of safety car periods. When I heard that explanation a couple of times, I stopped believing in it - they cannot be so stupid that they think Heikki will benefit from a heavier fuel load in every friggin' race. I said at the time they will lose more by doing so, and in my opinion that's exactly what happened - Heikki was not gaining anything but he was losing because of McLaren's "smart" approach to "possible" safety car periods. I think it is reasonable to say that the safety car period most often DOES NOT happen, and if you are prepared for it EVERY TIME, then you are going to lose.


Heikki was FURIOUS I think at least 2 times in interviews, when he had just jumped out of the car and a Finnish reporter was there to stick a microphone in front of his mouth. You guys didn't hear how he was swearing on live television. There could be no mistake on interpretation - he was swearing in Finnish on live Finnish television broadcast. He indeed was furious. I told about that here and people shrugged it off by saying things like "he should have been faster". Yeah, what a good argument! Of course he should have been faster. And he was faster.

Then when he was giving interviews in English, he had had some time to cool down, and he wasn't so furious as he had been when speaking in Finnish. This is what you lose when you don't hear them in their native language. I lose it as well with the drivers whose native language is not Finnish or English.


The thing when he was furious was when he very likely was told by McLaren not to race Lewis. This was I recall in Silverstone and in Germany. On both times when he got out of the car he was furious. One comment I remember was something like "I AM NOT ALLOWED TO RACE! *swearing swearing*"


I guess some people didn't notice that early in the 2008 season he was indeed matching Lewis speed-wise! Therefore the argument that he should have been faster to avoid the unfavourable fuel strategies, does not work. He was faster and he still was forced into a supporting role. I maintained then and I still maintain that McLaren knew already before the season started that they are going to favour Lewis over Heikki, and indeed what I saw happen supports that. So, yeah, I was not liking McLaren claiming they are treating their drivers equal. Hypocrites! Liars!




Now, people, don't make the mistake some of you have made many times. I AM NOT CLAIMING HEIKKI TO BE AS GOOD AS LEWIS OR BETTER! Don't come slag me and my arguments off with such non-sense, I've had enough of it. It still does not make sense. Read and understand what I am saying, please.

You can say now in retrospect of course it was a correct decision from McLaren to favour Lewis as he won the WDC - but you see, the thing is, early in the 2008 season they had no proof that Lewis was the faster of the two. Heikki was fast, often faster than Lewis in qualifying fuel corrected as the McLaren bosses themselves said many times. Therefore, do not come here telling he was so slow that that is why he was forced into a supporting role - that argument makes zero sense - what makes sense is they had decided well in advance who will be favoured and they executed that plan right from the very early races of the season when there was pretty much nothing in between those two guys speed-wise.


Now, why has Heikki dropped down so much since those early races of the 2008 season? I don't know. I do know Lewis has been favoured this year as well, he has received updates to the car regularly before Heikki - this is a sure sign there is no equal treatment in the team. Sure, the one is a Champion and the other one is not, but hey, do not come to tell me they are treating them equally, that's ######## and you know it.

I believe Heikki has been demoralised by the treatment he has received at McLaren, and ironically, Ron Dennis gave a comment Heikki was taken apart at Renault and they had put him back together. Well, guess what, Ron, I think Heikki is a better race driver today but you didn't do any good for his self-confidence by forcing him into a #2 role so clearly and at the same time claiming he is getting equal treatment. Now THAT will take a guy apart - he thinks he should be matching Lewis but then you aren't giving him a fair chance to do so, that will screw his self-confidence up.

I truly hope this guy gets into another F1 team next year and without similar "we will treat you equal" lies. The guy is fast - he proved it several times in 2008 and in 2009 that he can match Lewis and that has to be excellent.

Bah. What do I know. I am Finnish as well, of course what I see and hear cannot be true

CerinoDevoti - 30 October 2009 05:24 PM

I'm not so sure Kimi could handle such deplorable working conditions again after his terrible time at Ferrari.

It's no wonder that he explicitly asked for ice cream bars after working at Scuderia Sweatshop in his new contract and this may be the stumbling block to him signing the new McLaren deal since Ferrari has exclusive rights to the paddock ice cream bar license.

I don't know. It looks quite likely now that Kimi is going back to McLaren.

You have to consider Kimi is in a much better position to negotiate his contract with McLaren compared to Heikki. He has had loads of success in F1 for several years. McLaren knows in advance he is one of the excellent drivers in F1. He has been a top driver ever since he stepped into the sport. This gives him the advantage over Heikki that he can demand some clauses into his contract which should contractually guarantee him a better position in the team than what Heikki had.

I believe his managers take this into notice and are not going to let Kimi sign a contract that would put him into a #2 position in the team. In fact I think they are explicitly going to require equal treatment in the contract. I would be very surprised if they don't.

But I am not worried - if Kimi ends up at Mclaren, I think his character, his personality, it is distinctly different to that of Heikki, Heikki is the guy who gets upset and angry much more easily, so he is more likely going to suffer from "mind games" within the team. Kimi will for the most part ignore mind games and will just focus on what he is doing. I think in fact that Heikki's problem might have been to look too much at what Lewis was doing. I think it was Jyrki Järvilehto who made a comment "Heikki needs to stop looking at Lewis' side of the garage" and I think that's where Heikki made a mistake - he let the situation get in his head in such a way it demoralised him and made him perform below his level.

^ Perhaps. I think Kimi isn't going to care about Lewis or what he's doing, so long as it doesn't force Kimi to drive a P.O.S. full of left-overs and spare parts...

I have to add here that a woman who used to race with both Heikki and Kimi in go-karts, told a story of Heikki, that he is the kind of guy who gets angry and is very angry when he gets angry.

He is a temperamental guy and the sort of personality who refuses to lose. The woman told an example that they would play video games, and they would keep playing until Heikki wins. Heikki would get very upset if he lost.

I think this sort of insight is useful in understanding how Heikki might have reacted to what has been going on at McLaren - he has likely not taken it calmly, he has been furious, as was the case a couple of times on live television broadcast during the 2008 season.

I think he is the kind of person who takes himself very seriously, and "beats himself up" very badly if he loses. That's how he has looked like to me. He has been angry when he has lost.

I think all this combined, it has demoralised him and made him perform below his level. He was at Lewis' level when they started racing in the same team in 2008, but he dropped back and there are several reasons for that, one likely being Heikki letting it get in his head that he is losing whilst the team claims they are giving him equal opportunity (and then go and bolt the latest updates on Lewis' car).

I think the timing of when Heikki went to McLaren was not very good, it would have been better for him to race in some other team a couple more years and then go to McLaren. McLaren had just had the disaster of 2007 when Lewis and Fernando and Dennis screwed up big time, fighting inside the team and losing the Championships because of that. They wanted to avoid a similar disaster in 2008 and "played it safe" and made Heikki the #2 no matter how fast he is. So it is understandable, but the timing for Heikki was very unfortunate I think.



The same woman told also that Kimi broke her toes in a go-karting race, by the way.

anzie - 30 October 2009 07:13 PM

... Kimi broke her toes in a go-karting race ...

Is this the Finnish equivalent of "kneecapping"?

Was the breaking of toes on purpose, or just a case of hard racing?...

She said Kimi tried to overtake her where there was no room to do so, they collided, and Kimi's go-kart went over her toes. Some of her toe(s) were broken.

She discussed it with Kimi, and Kimi had disagreed, thinking he isn't guilty. But the woman said she has forgiven Kimi.

That being said, I think Kimi won a lot of the races here. But the woman was good as well. I recall she took part in a World Championship race in France in some year. You don't get there unless you are reasonably good. I am not 100 % sure of this - I just recall she talked about it some time but I could remember wrong.

She is a reporter for the Finnish television channel MTV3 nowadays. She reports both WRC and F1. Here is her blog:

http://blogit.mtv3.fi/racegirl/

Her name is Anette Latva-Piikkilä.