For Heikki Kovalainen, the McLaren MP4-23 will forever be remembered as the car that guided him to his only Formula 1 victory at the 2008 Hungarian Grand Prix. But that isn’t the only reason why it’s his favourite.
Kovalainen’s career has had several chapters. He made 111 starts in F1 before tackling Japan’s Super GT scene and becoming champion in 2016. Now he’s back competing in rallying with a national title in Japan already under his belt.
Not unusually for a Finn, the World Rally Championship was his first love – at least until he found himself distracted by the sight of a red-and-white McLaren being tamed by countryman Mika Hakkinen in 1993.
“The MP4-23 was a championship-winning car [with Lewis Hamilton], and to be part of the McLaren team with Ron Dennis and Martin Whitmarsh there running the team was kind of my childhood dream,” explains Kovalainen, who joined McLaren after a rookie F1 season with Renault in 2007 that had peaked with a fine second in torrential rain at Fuji.
Kovalainen’s 2008 campaign was one of highs and lows. Pole at Silverstone and becoming the 100th world championship race winner at the Hungaroring, after a late engine failure for erstwhile leader Felipe Massa, contrasted with a tyre failure in the Spanish Grand Prix that resulted in a hospital visit.
But, in Kovalainen’s eyes, the MP4-23 is one of the most attractive F1 cars of a period when the cars had sprouted several aerodynamic appendages, thanks to its Silver Arrows livery.
“I think it was one of the best looking cars as well to date,” he notes. “The current McLaren doesn’t appeal to me like the chrome McLaren, but of course, I am a little bit biased!”
This era of F1 came with the unmistakable scream of V8 engines and the MP4-23 had arguably the best in the field at that point. The Mercedes FO 108V powerplant particularly stood out for the 2005 GP2 runner-up.
“Compared to the Renault engine I drove the year before, it felt so racy,” says Kovalainen, now back behind the wheel after recovering from open heart surgery. “The Mercedes engine had a lot more vibration so when they started up the car it sounded and felt rougher. When they started it up I was like ‘Wow’! But it had a lot of grunt and just sounded really cool.”
Kovalainen reckons it was the car’s balance that really suited his style. It had plenty of front grip “and I have always liked a car that has a lot of front grip”.
He explains: “Quite often in Formula 1 you are running maximum front wing and then you have to start shifting the mechanical balance. That takes something away from the rear, it gets unstable and it usually goes the wrong way.
"It was so well balanced, it was just a shame that I couldn’t take full advantage of it more often"
Heikki Kovalainen
“But the McLaren naturally had a lot of front grip, so we had a margin on the front wing. During qualifying, for example, if the circuit was rubbering in, we could sneak a bit more front wing. That was one of the main things that I liked about that car.
“It was so well balanced, it was just a shame that I couldn’t take full advantage of it more often. Lewis Hamilton won the championship obviously, but it had the potential to be a top-three car pretty much on all kinds of circuits. I just wasn’t up to it, but the car was great.”
While the McLaren holds pride of place in Kovalainen’s dream garage, the 42-year-old has a few honourable mentions when it comes to machines he’s driven. All hark back to his first motorsport love.
His current Toyota GR Yaris Rally2, which he plans to contest events in the Japanese Rally Championship, is on his list alongside the Citroen C4 and the Peugeot 307 WRC cars. These French-built rally cars, famously driven by Sebastien Loeb and Marcus Gronholm respectively, have two interesting stories attached to them, for differing reasons.
"I have driven some WRC cars, I drove the Citroen C4 in 2007,” he says. “I had a promotional event organised by Total with Dani Sordo and Sebastien Loeb. We went to the Paul Ricard Circuit in France and they drove the Renault F1 car that I was driving that year. We spent half a day at Paul Ricard and then half a day on a stage.
“We still talk about it with Dani when I saw him at Rally Japan last year. I went as a passenger with him and he cut one corner and took a front-right wheel off, so they had to come and pick us up. It was a funny day, but it was a really nice car.
“And in the [2004] Race of Champions I drove the Peugeot 307 that Marcus Gronholm and Harri Rovanpera drove. That was very nice and I actually beat Loeb with that car!”
