Fifteen years ago was a glorious time for the McLaren F1 team with Mika Hakkinen behind the wheel, leading the team to win the world championship title in 1998 and 1999. This season, however, has not been a particularly great success for the McLaren-Mercedes team, currently ranked No.5 in the Constructor's Championship. And with just a few races left this season, it's very unlikely that any team will be able to catch up to Red Bull Racing-Renault.
Hakkinen debuted in F1 with Lotus in 1991 before joining as as a test driver for McLaren in 1993.
He won the world championship title in 1998 and 1999, beating the Ferrari drivers Michael Schumacher and Eddie Irvine, respectively.
After retiring from F1, c raced in the DTM (German Touring Car Masters) series, in which he won three races with Mercedes before his retirement from motorsports in 2007.
At "The Gillette Great Face Race" event during the Singapore Grand Prix last month, Life talked to Hakkinen about his career and winning a world championship. We also talked to McLaren- Mercedes sporting director Sam Michael about his passion for F1.
Mika Hakkinen
What did your parents say when you told them you wanted to be a car racer?
Mika, it's expensive!
What did you learn from being a champion?
I think it brings you a lot of confidence. Since I was a kid, I was confident about winning races. It took seven years just to win the first race. So you can imagine in those years I was thinking it was never going to happen. But you have to believe in yourself. As soon as you win the world championship, you can really say, 'Hey, I did it'. So it gives you great confidence.
What are some of the characteristics you feel an F1 driver should have?
Well, F1 is teamwork. I won the world championship twice but I would never say, 'I did it myself'. No, it's teamwork. You have to select great engineers, designers, mechanics and marketing people. So it's a complete big team. We create success and in my time McLaren had about a thousand people working. It's a massive operation so when you're walking into the factory, you really need to take care of everybody. And that's the challenge. So when you're a racing driver, it's not just about sitting in a car thinking, 'Oh, I'm going to win the race'. You need people to support you, to build you the best car in the world. And everybody's job in the company is important.
While racing, have you ever thought about danger and death?
No. You just have to work with the reality, and the fact. I think positive things, not negative. Positive thinking is a good way to do it.
Can you explain the feeling of being behind the wheel?
When you go to a fun fair, going on a roller coaster. It's scary. It's fun. It makes you laugh. And when you finish that, you think, 'Shall I go again?'.
Racing is the same thing. It's unbelievable. It's an amazing experience, and releases incredible emotions. When you stop driving, you're like, 'Oh, I want to get back in that car again!'. It's good fun. And Formula One is extreme.
When you do it for many years, you get used to it and you learn to enjoy it. But when you go for the first time, that's scary.
It's so quick and it always fascinates me how the technology is so advanced and what an F1 car can do. Sometimes it doesn't feel real, and the performance is so unbelievable, so fast.
Sam Michael
You have always worked behind the scenes, have you ever thought about becoming a driver yourself?
No. Driving is a very different career from engineering because you are normally driving a go-kart from the age of five or six years old. And you have a very structured plan, especially now, of how to get into grand prix racing. There are very few of you so you have a very small chance of success as a driver. Also, you are not normally going to engineering school or college if you want to be a driver because you don't have time. You are training for your fitness and training in a car. It is a very different career to almost any other job in the grand prix team.
Has being the director of the team been your goal from the start?
Yes, I studied mechanical engineering. When I finished school, I started working for a grand prix team and then worked my way up. But before you go into grand prix racing you don't know what you will achieve, you don't know what your ability is. Once you are in there you can work it out.
How do you approach your job?
The thing is, in F1, there are a lot of very intelligent people. You do have to give the direction, but at the same time, they are very skilled in what they need to do. You cannot just force your style on somebody because you are around a lot of people who are very like-minded. Once you get used to Formula One, you realise you don't need to do that. The business is not like, say, the clothing industry where you can have your own style and you can come up with something unique and develop in a certain direction. We are very strictly controlled by the laws of physics. It becomes quite straightforward what you have to do. Let's say someone has an idea about a design. It will be very straightforward process in our industry to model it, to prove that it's faster, and then go in that direction. So you wouldn't have someone come up and say, 'I sort of feel this should be the way'. Most ideas come from a feeling, but then they get verified, using stimulation and test equipment.
What is the appeal of being behind the scenes, planning and controlling everything?
First of all, it's very interesting. You are working on the fastest cars in the world. You have extremely small turnaround time so you have to have the ability to respond very quickly. When you work in an environment like that it's extremely rewarding to have nothing one day, and then produce it the next day, and see it running in the grand prix and being successful. Grand prix is prototype racing. Our cars never run twice on every single track we go to. We develop it and it's changing so quickly. A car is a physical thing and you can improve it. You can make it lighter and stronger. All the things that we work on can always be improved.
