Melting the Iceman:
by Timothy Collings.
1999 Qantas Australian Grand Prix Official Program.

Holidays? What holidays? In the six weeks after winning his maiden Formula One World Drivers' Championship, Mika
Hakkinen was seen here, there and everywhere, always in search of a few hours off, far from the madding crowd of Grand Prix racing. Paris, Helsinki, Frankfurt, London, Bologna and Monaco were just a few of the postings which filled the handsome Finn's itinerary as he went from one television studio to another awards night - and everywhere in between. "Sometimes we visited three of four countries in just one weekend", he reveals.

Honours rained on Hakkinen and, as with everything else in life, he took them in his measured and comfortable stride. At the Monte Carlo Sporting Club, he received his trophy as the FIA's Formula One World Drivers' Champion with a smile that lit the vast, glittering room. It was confirmation of his year of graduation, proof he had truly come of age and realised the promise so apparent from his early outings with Lotus. Proof, too, that when he lines up on the grid at Albert Park for the 1999 Qantas Australian Grand Prix, he will be in car No. 1 -the champion's car.

It may have been forgotten, in the midst of the frenzy that is modern Formula One, but Hakkinen made another significant decision last year when he tied the knot with his long-term girlfriend Erja. She had been with him for five yearsm sharing the trauma of that terrible accident in Adelaide in 1995, when she abandoned her travel agency and television work and flew directly to Australia to help nurse him back to health. While their wedding was a typically quiet affair, relatively speaking, it was the most important landmark of Hakkinen's 1998. "Yes, she's a good girl and she keeps a close eye on me", said Hakkinen earlier this year, with his customary broad grin.

His dry and understated sense of humour is often overlooked or underestimated. To appreciate him fully, one has to look and listen carefully, because Hakkinen often delivers lines with a raised eyebrow, a quick smile or even a wink of one eye. "I know what people sometimes think", the Nordic star often labelled the 'Ice Man' says of his image. "But they don't even know me. Television is not the way to someone, is it? You don't have conversations with it, do you? And if I am seen on television, it's when I'm at a race track, or at my work. It's not the real me who is seen by everyone. It's the working me. I always try to be relaxed, easygoing and just be myself, not letting the pressures of Formula One upset me. But sometimes you feel it. It makes you feel sharp, and that's the same for everyone in the paddock, I am sure".

Hakkinen's humour rose to the surface at one winter awards night in London when, to help mark the occasion of his fellow-Finn Tommi Makinen's success in winning his third successive World Rally Drivers' Championship, he sent a hotel porter to buy a top hat. "He did a hat-trick, didn't he?" joked Hakkinen, whose trick of riding a unicycle in the F1 paddock was one of his early-career trademarks - along with a confidence in his ability to win. That journey to success, however, took a lot longer than expected after he made his debut on the streets of Phoenix in 1991. But it was worth it, as his long-awaited breakthough win at Jerez in Spain at the end of 1997 triggered the series of successes that delivered the 1998 World Drivers' Championship.

Probably the most significant victory of Hakkinen's triumphant 1998 was the first, in Melbourne, last March. It may have come as a result of David Coulthard's obedience in honouring a pre-race pact, and it may have caused an uproar by upsetting the Australian betting fraternity, but it was vitally important. It put Hakkinen in front, and gave him an advantage he never really relinquished. The other wins in Brazil, Spain, Monaco, Austria, Germany, Luxembourg and Japan were crucial too, but none was so crucial as that first one here right in Victoria. Hakkinen sees that first win as a key to his season. " I had won the previous race, the last one of 1997, and it kept me winning", he says. "It was a breakthrough of me. David and I had made our agreement and he stuck to it. It was an honourable thing and he was fantasticm perfect about it all. But if that was a great race too win, for me it was the Monaco Grand Prix that was most emotional of all at the time. Or maybe Luxembourg, the second-last race, or in Japan, at Suzuka. They were all great victories, I think".

These days, Hakkinen can laugh easily. After years of living victoriously, he has found life as a champion to be an enjoyable experience. And now, he says, he finds that people give him more time and more space. More than ever before, they allow him to be himself. The very act of first becoming and then being World Champion has not only attached his name to that famous roll-call of glory that runs from Farina to Villeneuve - it has also freed him of burdens of ambition and expectation. "That (last) win in Suzuka has changed everything", he explains. "The five weeks before that race was incredible. I was so tense - they were an eternity. I knew I had to go through it and beat Michael (Schumacher) and actually take the title, but mentally, it was sometimes very difficult. Every evening, I was wondering how to approach that last race in Japan. I felt my spirit would break, but it grew stronger. If I seemed to be relaxed, it was not true - I was tense".

While Hakkinen was confident that he was up to the task physically, he sought comfort in the quality of his machinery. "I had confidence in the team and the car and the engine. That mattered the most. When a driver discovers during the pre-season winter testing that he has got a car to win races, he feels very good, very strong and very confident. That is what happened to me. It is a very uplifting discovery, I can tell you". Some said of course, that it was Hakkinen's year because he was the favoured son at McLaren. He had served his time, seven long and sometimes difficult years. Some of them very frustrating, other hard to bear. But the team was so good to him, and when he lay fighting for his life in Adelaide, they stood by him all the way.

When Hakkinen recovered, he came back stronger and better than ever. He showed his true human spirit - the strength to survive. "I learned a lot from that and I changed", he says. "I know I want to win again, and I know David will start the new season wanting to win and be the champion. But at McLaren, the team is the most important, and we both want to see McLaren win the title. We'll see what happens now".

--End of Article--

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