Heikki Kovalainen's year of years

Short Corners

Peter talks at length with the driver who in 2024 underwent open-heart surgery before rising again to win. Only one other driver in motor racing history - Robert Kubica - has won both a World Championship Grand Prix and a major rally championship; the other is Heikki Kovalainen. Winner of the 2008 Hungarian GP for McLaren-Mercedes and a podium finisher for Renault F1, Heikki subsequently won two Japanese Rally Championships with Toyota in 2022 and 2023. Then, in the spring of 2024, Heikki's life changed suddenly when he underwent urgent open-heart surgery in Finland. For two hours he was on life-support.
As we now know, the operation was a resounding success. Heikki was soon back in business, presenting the trophies on the podium for the Secto Rally of Finland in early August, before winning again in Japan. It wasn't over, though: on November 25 he was lying a stunning third in the WRC2 division of the Rally of Japan when he crashed heavily on a fast right-hander. As he says in this interview, "it gave the new heart system a bit of a work-out..."
And still there was to be an epilogue: basically uninjured, Heikki on December 14-15 jumped into a car totally new to him and won the all-tarmac Union Rally in Italy.
All for the love of his sport.
Which is why, in our opinion Heikki was unquestionably the star of 2024 In this interview he talks to Peter about his surgery (44:30); about his massive shunt in Japan (28.53); and about beating the likes of Michael Schumacher, Sebastien Loeb, David Coulthard, Felipe Massa, Sebastian Vettel and Toyota's latest Rally star, Sami Pajari, in head-to-head match races in a wide variety of cars (17:00).
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