|
MIKKOLA
The most famous Flying Finn of them all - Hannu Mikkola - is the driver Audi chose to develop the first quattros. It was the start of a now legendary championship-winning partnership. Here, Tony Howard talks to Hannu during the 1000 Lakes Rally and later as he relaxes at home...
FOR A
superstar, Hannu Mikkola is very unassuming. It's a breathtaking privilege
to sit beside him at speed, witnessing masterful car control that has made
him the most successful rally driver of all time. Yet, for him, it's
nothing special. And the rest of his life appears just as relaxed, well
balanced.
He has a rare
gift-time to communicate - whether you talk to him in the quiet of his own
home or amidst the high drama of a rally which may be going superbly well,
or terribly wrong.
He was even
approachable when walking down a rain-lashed special stage, after crashing
his car into the trees of Finland not two hours after the start of the
1000 Lakes Rally. With months of hard work down the drain, wasn't that a
terrible anti-climax?
"Yes," he says,
"but not immediately. Everything has stopped and you are just relieved
that you and your partner are in one piece. A few hours later, it gets to
you.
"If the car breaks
or somebody else makes a mistake, it doesn't hurt me very much. But when I
do it, I really hate that.
"I don't really
know what happened this time," he reveals. "The fact is that the roads
chosen were very narrow this year, and it was very slippery. There was a
flat-out kink with trees on both sides, and the car moved 20 or 30
centimetres too far to the left.
"The door handles
brushed a tree, and I think the rear bumper caught on it, putting the car
sideways. I thought we were okay - I never realised we were in trouble
until we started hitting other trees." It was only the second time in seven seasons with Audi Sport that Mikkola had seriously damaged a car. Reputation
"In 1985 we were
doing some high-speed testing for the Safari Rally, and suddenly the road
wasn't there," he recalls. "So it wasn't really my fault. I haven't done
this sort of thing too often, but I guess it has to happen some time."
Although he
clearly takes such things to heart, his reputation could easily withstand
a few more dents.
Flying Finns and
Speeding Swedes have dominated rallying for decades, but Mikkola's record
18 World Championship rally wins are unbeaten. He won the title in 1983,
and has completed five other seasons in the top three.
Now, 45, he shows
no signs of peaking out. He won Kenya's demanding Safari Rally for Audi at
Easter.
His first event
was in a second-hand Volvo, bought clandestinely when he was a 21-year-old
engineering student. Winning his first 1000 Lakes Rally in 1968 made him
Finnish national champion. But he became an international household name
two years later when he won the Daily Mirror's 16,000-mile epic
London-Mexico World Cup Rally. He celebrated his 28th birthday en route.
"When I can't be
the best any more, I'll do some proper engineering work," he said at the
finish. But we're still waiting.
Genius is one
element of his durability. His temperament is another. Audi Sport team
boss Herwart Kreiner puts it in a nutshell: "Hannu is different. All the
time, he thinks for the factory and for the mechanics."
Nordic prowess in
rallying begins with climate and terrain. Car control is sharp, thanks to
half-a-year of ice and snow, which eventually melt to reveal thousands of
miles of near-deserted gravel roads.
"Rallying's at a
very high level here in Finland," Mikkola says. "It's a modern sport so it
creates a lot of interest and attracts plenty of youngsters. Also, we tend
to be good when performing on our own - things like running, jumping and
skiing. But put Finns together in a team for football or ice hockey, and
they're awful."
Mikkola has
trouble explaining his own dexterity further. "I'm not the kind of person
who thinks first about the solution, how to drive. For me it's been quite
easy. I just sit in the car. I feel it. And that's it. "I've never really been able to describe why I did this or that. Sometimes you meet people who can tell you exactly how or why they went off the road. Maturity
"Always I say, 'If
you had so much time to think about it, why didn't you save the car?'
Because it normally happens - snap - like that for me. And I haven't got
time to analyse: If I do this, it will go there. It just goes off, and
that's it."
Maturity is a
major asset in this game, he believes. "Youngsters don't have the
experience or the eye for the right lines to drive fast. You have to get
the speed somehow, and that's when you make mistakes.
"A young driver
may be quicker than I am, nine times out of 10. But the tenth time, he
makes his mistake, and I catch up with him again."
Mikkola ranks
alongside grand prix racing's best, such as Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell,
Nelson Piquet and Ayrton Senna. But, although Formula 1 money is required
to contest a World Rally Championship, the atmosphere of the rallying
circuit is less self-obsessed.
"Rally drivers are
quite good friends," says Mikkola. "Here in Finland, we see each other
quite a lot - not just rallying, but boating and so on.
"It seems to me
that, in Formula 1, the drivers are not so happy with each other. But, in
our business, we don't drive against each other physically - you drive
your rally over the stages. You don't have the situation in Formula 1
where you can blame another driver, complain that he was blocking you.
That makes it easier for us."
Ironically,
however, rallying is in many respects much more of a team effort than
grand prix racing. For a start, there are two people in the car, not one,
and this demands a continuous act of faith between driver and co-driver
who depend on each other for their lives. The remarkable symbiosis between Mikkola and his partner Arne Hertz, a 48-year-old Swede, has kept them together for 11 years. "You learn to know each other," says Mikkola. "And I'm very happy with him because I like the way he reads the pace notes. He knows exactly what I like to have, and I don't have to double-check anything." Strenuous
The pair will no
doubt continue working together, one way or another, for a considerable
time once they cease competing. Meanwhile the pace of Mikkola's life
continues unabated, even though Audi has curtailed its rallying programme
while deciding which way to go in the face of precipitate rule changes
that have wrong-footed most manufacturers active in the sport.
Contesting a full
world rally series is a strenuous business. "It's a hell of a thing to do
because it takes up 300 days of your year," says Mikkola.
"Each rally takes
one week and you practise 14 hours a day for two weeks before that. There
are 12 rallies - one a month. Add to that the travel, some testing and a
bit of PR work, and you don't have many days off. Most drivers who do it
say they've had enough after one or two years. It really isn't an easy
job, believe me."
Mikkola would
happily settle for a season of his favourite events - Monte Carlo,
Portugal, Safari, Acropolis, 1000 Lakes and Britain's Lombard RAC Rally.
But that still
wouldn't leave him much time to relax with his wife Arja and their young
sons Juha and Vesa, the latter summarising his father's main
pre-occupations as "reading Donald Duck and going to the bank for money."
Typically, an
event like the 1000 Lakes involves driving flat-out for 1500 miles of
testing to set-up suspension and brakes. "You should always remember that,
first, the car has to be easy to drive,” Mikkola says. “You have to have
confidence in it. There may be some adjustment that makes it a little bit
quicker.
"But, if this
makes you afraid all the time about what it's going to do next, you can't
drive like that for long periods. So, ultimately, you'll he slower."
Next comes 5000
miles of practice, followed by the rally itself - this year's 1000 Lakes
was 1058 miles long with 52 special stages totalling 307 miles. When he's not in a rally car, Mikkola spends much of his time travelling the world to fly the flag for Audi. September alone saw him at the Frankfurt motor show for six days, driving dealers round the 13-mile Nürburgring circuit for five days, and in Los Angeles for another five days with dealers from North and South America. During one three-week stint in Japan last Autumn, he demonstrated an 80 quattro to no less than 560 people - everyone in the country directly associated with Audi. Sunshine
Scandinavians have
a reputation for prodigious thirst. Mikkola used to be no exception, and
by the rind-1970s he'd become a trifle paunchy. Now slimmer, he smiles: "I
haven't had a hangover for more than 10 years, but I still have to watch
my diet."
Perhaps
surprisingly, all that high-speed driving is insufficient to keep him as
fit as he needs to be, so he jogs. "I hate it," he grimaces. "But I have
to do it, and the only enjoyment I get is from sort of winning over
myself. My doctor told me at least 30 minutes - about four miles - say
three times a week.
"When I started, I
wasn't in condition, and it was very nice to see how quickly I improved.
After a few months, you notice that you're thinking about other things,
which means you're no longer having to fight just to run.
"If you travel a
lot, jogging is the only thing you can do - all you need are the shoes,
and you can do it any time, anywhere. For a game of tennis or squash, you
have to find a partner and a place to play."
Golf is Mikkola's
other sport, but it's less of an obsession than it was. "It was a terrible
sort of disease. I played a lot - every day for the first two-and-a-half
years - and that was a big problem. Luckily, I'm slowing down now."
The family divides
its year, living from May to September at home in Espoo just outside
Helsinki, and the rest of the time in Florida. The reason is more one of
sunshine than tax exile. For enlightened Finnish tax law means that, if
you work more than six months a year for a foreign company and spend no
more than 70-80 days in the country, you don't get clobbered.
"It's a long
winter here," Mikkola says. "And, with young kids not yet in school, we
are free to make a choice. But we've decided to give them an education in
Finland, so we'll soon have to stay here in winter too."
The Florida
connection goes back to 1979 when Mlikkola's father retired, and his
parents wanted a warm escape from the near-Arctic winter. Almost all Finns grow up close to water, whether on the coast or next to one of the 62,000 inland lakes. So the family's life-style is much the same in both homes, and a boat is indispensable. Time saver
In this case, it's
a 36-ft Nimbus 4000, moored to a jetty on the lagoon at the bottom of the
garden. Power from a pair of 4.1-litre 200bhp Volvo diesels is sufficient
for 30 knots. Cruising at 22-23 knots, safe endurance is 10 hours on 700
litres of fuel, though it may run as long as 13 hours.
Below, there is
everything that opens and shuts, and the wheelhouse-cum-saloon sports the
latest electronic navigational aids, including auto-pilot.
"This is still the
size of boat we can handle as a family," Mikkola says. "I don't need
anybody helping, although it's nice if you have somebody else who knows
what to do, and my wife's pretty good at that.
"It's very handy
for us because it has two cabins - one for the kids, and one for us. And
it has this small shower which is fantastic. None of my previous boats had
one and, after two days, I used to feel terrible."
Mikkola took
delivery personally in Denmark, and the 650-mile voyage home took him
three days.
A real time saver
in everyday life, the boat takes just 20 minutes to reach Helsinki's
shopping centre by sea, instead of an hour by car.
But the most
important role of the Nimbus is as the ultimate get-away vehicle - to a
10-acre island, 100 miles away. "It takes four hours to get there,"
Mikkola says, "and we're never in the open sea. We just pass between lots
of islands all the way, and it's very beautiful.
"We've now built a
small cottage out there - it's in the middle of nowhere, with no
electricity and no running water. So it's a sort of sport to go there. But
we cheat a bit because we can go down to the boat for a shower, and I have
a mobile phone there too." 2343 words Copyright © by Anthony Howard for Audibilis |
