For many, undergoing open-heart surgery would usually spell an end to any extreme activities like tearing through a Finnish forest or navigating through a twisty Japanese mountain road in a rally car. Not for Heikki Kovalainen . The Formula 1 race winner and childhood rally fan has overcome the “biggest challenge of [his] life” to recover from a potentially life-altering surgery and return to the cockpit in Japan earlier this month.
If anything, rallying - a discipline the Finn turned to after seven years competing in Japan’s Super GT came to end in 2021 - has been a shining light at the end of a dark and concerning tunnel. The former Renault, McLaren and Lotus/Caterham F1 driver of 111 starts has clung on to the thought of returning to the rally stages and used this to drive him on through his recovery. “This is the biggest challenge of my life, and it's one of the biggest events of my life to be honest,” Kovalainen tells Motorsport.
com. “The first motivation was just to be able to return to a sort of normal lifestyle. But then I have to admit that being able to return to rallying or even to a race car one day was also at the back of my mind.
It would have been quite a big decision not to be able to race or drive rallying anymore. I still feel that I have the passion and the motivation, especially for rallying now. I have the passion to continue, perhaps not in the WRC or the very top of the world level, but still, you want to continue driving.
These were the dri.