Sky Sports made a documentary series about F1 Legends in 2012. The episodes were all great but one of my favorites was Häkkinen's episode. Mika Häkkinen was my favorite driver after Ayrton Senna had passed away. Häkkinen was a friend of Senna's and also his last teammate at McLaren in 1993.
Häkkinen almost lost his life at Adelaide in 1995. He was in a coma for a short period but recovered.
He won his first GP in 1997 and 2 world championships in 1998 and 1999.
In the year 2000 it was close but because of several retirements he had no chance against Schumacher in the end.
In 2001 he became a father and lost the interest of the sport. He gave his seat to Kimi Räikkönen after the 2001 season.
Today Mika Häkkinen is the manager of Valtteri Bottas. Some say that he is the next Häkkinen. Let's wait and see what happens with his career. But in the meantime you can start by looking at this video and remember how good Häkkinen was.
(press the YouTube-logo to watch this full screen on YouTube)
Heikki Kovalainen driving in the streets of Moscow at the Moscow City Racing -event.
The video is filmed with GoPro-cameras so the material is very nice. You can watch it in HD (720p) if you like but only if you change the quality yourself from the settings.
Press the YouTube -logo first to see it on full screen and to change settings.
These kind of events are awesome if you live in a country that don't have a F1 Grand Prix.
In 2006 I went to the Helsinki City Grand Prix to see the Toyota F1 team and 4 time rally world champion Juha Kankkunen drive around the Helsinki Railway Station Square. They had screens all over so you could see the incar-camera as well.
I was very excited to see Jarno Trulli drive by me with his Toyota. It was nice to see the car but why did he drive so slowly? They asked him about it and the answer was that the road was too bumpy..
I know it can be difficult but come on! You are a racing driver who has won in Monaco! Put the pedal to the medal!
Juha Kankkunen was no disappointment. He was so fast with the rally car and how he drove in to the corners! Wau! What a sound! He has not lost his touch at all.
I know it was probably harder to drive the F1 car but anyways. Jarno Trulli should have shown a little speed at least. The guy is famous for his qualifying speed but at that event he did not impress me.
I used to like Trulli a lot but when he became Kovalainen's teammate I saw how much better Heikki was.
Sometimes city's can not handle events like these so they do something else. For example they display cars in shops or malls so people can take pictures. I have also seen cars (turned into simulators) in arcades walking by quickly without knowing who's they were.
Here is a list of cars and where I saw them:
In Turkey I saw a yellow F1 car so it was probably a Jordan.
In Macau I saw a red and white car so it was probably an old McLaren or maybe a F3 car from the early 90's.
In Helsinki I saw Heinz-Harald Frentzen's car at a shopping mall and Kimi Räikkönen's 2012 Lotus at a jewelry store. Räikkönen's car was probably a replica because the car looked so new.
In Hong Kong I could not believe my eyes when I stood in front of a McLaren sports car store. I saw AYRTON SENNA'S CAR!!!!
Keep your eyes open! Because you never know who's car could suddenly be in front of you. Even though your city or country doesn't have it's own grand prix.
I have seen so many Ayrton Senna documentarys even before his death and I never get tired of these.
This is the full version so you don't have to play around with clips. The video has english subtitles as well. This is not the 2010 documentary called "Senna" so don't get confused.
Click on the YouTube logo to watch it full screen on YouTube. Enjoy!
