Q&A with Heikki Kovalainen

Every season drivers arrive back claiming they are stronger and faster than ever before. For once, it’s true, as Heikki Kovalainen explains how new a new deal is allowing him to do what he does best – race.

What have you been doing over the winter and how you are feeling in the run up to the season?

I am feeling good and I’ve had a really positive winter. I spent December in Finland with my family and some friends and was able to do some really good fitness work there. I’ve had a two-month plan from my trainer Dan [Williams] and it worked really well.

Then we got back to our base in Switzerland in the first week in January. I did another fitness camp in Abu Dhabi, where I went to train in hot conditions in the second week of January. We returned back from there last week and now I’m back at work, here with the team and will begin preparing with the engineers and the designers for the new season.

So, overall, I feel good, I feel really ready for the season and fitter than ever before, and I haven’t had any injures,touch wood!

It’s clear that the team has made progress over the past two years but the fact remains that we are still closer to the back of the grid than the front? How long can that persist?

We were last year, but this year who knows? I still believe in the project greatly. Since the beginning I said to Tony I’m committed to the team – that’s why I’m still here. I see a lot of potential for our team, and I really do think that we can move up the grid.

Obviously we need to set some targets for this season and the car looks better than ever before. The team is just functioning better and better all the time, so I’m very happy here.

The ultimate target is to have better results, and we’ll see after the season starts where we stand. In any case, all is set better than ever before in this team to have a successful season and to make a step forward. So the only focus is now to move forward with the team and obviously increase my own performances from last year. That’s why I’m still here and still behind the project.

Obviously the goal is to win but is team-building something that’s important to you? Psychologically, does being able to help the team give you some satisfaction?

It’s lovely. Since I committed to this programme and since I signed a multi-year deal with the team, I haven’t even thought about looking somewhere else. I will stick to that decision, I will honour the contract and I will do the maximum I can for the team. And regardless of where we are on the grid, I will always give 110 per cent.

In the end, it’s all been very good, for me personally as well. I’ve been able to get back the confidence you need in Formula One and I’ve been able to work on the areas that were not correct earlier in my career. The team has given me a lot of freedom to give a lot of myself back, and to get back to a normal level of performance. I’m very grateful for the team that they have given me that space, and I think I’m very strongly back in the game now.

I’m sure I can perform at a very high level and I’m looking to improve every year – every race in fact – and working even better with the team.

There are a lot of positives I can take from these two years, even though the results aren’t at the front of the grid yet. The positives I take will then help me further in my career and in
my life; there is no question about that.

Speaking of furthering your career, you recently signed a new management deal with IMG, which is a huge agency. What does that mean for you?

The main impetus behind the IMG deal happening was two-fold really. First, I wanted to spend more time with the team and the engineers and not worry about other elements of my career, I wanted to leave that to someone else. Also, my girlfriend, Catherine, has been helping me with a lot of things, working with the team and organising travels and things like that and she wanted to do something else, so we thought that we needed to get those things sorted. We looked at the all the options, I met the guys at IMG and the details were all sorted out quite quickly. Basically, they are the partners I’m looking for. The deal will help me spend even more time with the team and it allows me to focus on the racing. They are more professional at looking at all the stuff that goes on around a Formula One driver, the stuff outside the cockpit.

So I think it will be a big boost for me and hopefully we will see even better performances on the track.

People will assume that it’s part of your resurgence with Caterham F1 Team and the fact that a lot of teams are perhaps now looking at you with envious eyes?

I really don’t look at all that stuff. My focus is wholly with Caterham F1 at the moment, and if we keep progressing as we have done over the past two years, and into this third year, then I can very well see myself carrying on a lot longer here.

There are a lot of things that I value very highly at Caterham. I’ve managed to be here since the beginning. I’ve gotten to know everyone very well. I have a very good position with the team and it’s working very well. So, these are all questions that, if you go to another team, would have to be answered again. If you go to another team, you have to build all that again. So it’s not as simple as just going from one place to another.

Overall, these two years, and hopefully this year as well, have been a really great time for my career, in rebuilding and finding form again and I’m grateful to Caterham and everyone in the team for that.

At the moment though, I think the focus for me has to be developing this car and finding the right set-up directions for it, so we can get the results we are targeting. The future, beyond that, can wait. So, for people who want to speculate, it’s not the right time to be talking about it and I’m not discussing anything with anyone!

Was part of the idea to consider a way you look after your ‘brand’? That seems to be an increasing element of a sports star’s life.

I think a Formula One career is not just the driving part, a life where once your career finished on the track that would be it. Hopefully something, some connection or relationship, would be carried over beyond the driving years and hopefully that’s something I can explore with IMG. They are a huge company and they have a number of ways of looking at things. It’s something we’ve had in mind as that’s just the way things are going now in sport.

But ultimately it’s designed to let you to clear your mind of all the messy details of paddock life and concentrate on the car?

Exactly. I don’t need to worry about emails or phone calls or discussions or anything. I’m not good at that. I’ve learned a lot over the past few years and that area is just not my cup of tea. It’s not where I see myself being useful. And sometimes you have to deal with these things over a race weekend or at a test session and, honestly, I found that quite disturbing. I feel that is not the right environment to be dealing with this stuff and I shouldn’t have that stress. So we leave it now to the pros!

You’ve had a chance to get a feel for the CT01. What are your impressions of the new car?

In Jerez, at the first test, we had a couple of problems on the first day, just with the starter of the car, but the second day was very successful. Once we fixed the problem I think the initial feeling was very positive. For a start we have a lot more grip in the car compared to last year, which is very good, especially considering that we’ve lost some devices from last year, such as the blown diffuser. We’ve been able to recover a lot of that grip, which is very encouraging.

Also we’ve been able to put a lot of miles on the car, which was something we were not able to do last year. So, I definitely think we are in a much better position than we were a year ago. So I’m really looking forward to putting some more miles on the CT01 and working even more on the set-up of the car.

Little by little we should be able to improve the performance as well, as we bring new parts and improve things, so overall, a very positive feeling!