Heikki
Kovalainen

Heikki Kovalainen was born on 19 October 1981 in Suomussalmi, Finland. He began in karting, which he raced from 1991 to 2000. He finished runner-up in the Finnish Formula A championship in 1999 and 2000 and won the Nordic championship in 2000. In 2001 he took fourth in British Formula Renault. Supported by the Renault junior programme, he finished third in British Formula 3 with Fortec in 2002, winning five races. In 2004 he won the World Series by Nissan title with Pons Racing, and in 2005 he was runner-up in GP2 for Arden, 15 points behind Nico Rosberg.

At Renault he was second test driver in 2004 and a full-time tester in 2006. He moved into a race seat for 2007 after Fernando Alonso left for McLaren. He finished tenth on his debut in Australia and scored his first points in Malaysia. He was fifth in the United States and, in the wet at Fuji, took second place for his first podium. He ended the year seventh in the championship.

For 2008 he joined McLaren as team-mate to Lewis Hamilton. He was third in Malaysia and took his only pole position at Silverstone. In Hungary he won his only Grand Prix when Felipe Massa's engine failed with three laps to go, making Kovalainen the 100th driver to win a Grand Prix. He was second at Monza. In Spain he crashed after a tyre failure, shortly after taking the lead; the cause was later traced to a manufacturing fault in the wheel rim. He finished the season seventh. In 2009 he stayed at McLaren, scored 22 points and ended twelfth, with fourth place at the European Grand Prix as his best result.

He drove for the new Lotus Racing team in 2010 and 2011, and for Caterham, as the team was renamed, in 2012. He scored no points in those years. 2012 was his last full season in Formula One. In 2013 he was a reserve driver for Caterham and then stood in at short notice for Kimi Räikkönen at Lotus for the last two races, finishing 14th in both the United States and Brazil. In total he started 111 races, won one, reached the podium four times and took one pole position.

After Formula One he raced in Super GT in Japan from 2015 and won the GT500 title in 2016 with SARD alongside Kohei Hirate. He also took up rallying and won the JN2 class of the Japan Rally Championship in 2021 with co-driver Sae Kitagawa. In 2004 he had won the "Champion of Champions" title at the Race of Champions.

Source: Wikipedia, “Heikki Kovalainen”. Text licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.