Two Peugeot 307 CC WRCs were lined up side-by-side, separated by a concrete barrier marking two distinct lanes. Marcus Grönholm was sat on the sidelines, having been driving a Citroën Xsara earlier that day.
Sébastien Loeb was buckled into the 307, the revs rising and waiting for the red start lights to extinguish.
Loeb in a Peugeot? Grönholm in a Citroën? It sounds rather strange. And it was about to get weirder.
In the other 307 was a young upstart from the world of single seaters. These days being strapped into a rally car is nothing unusual for him – but then-23 year old Heikki Kovalainen had shown up like a fish out of water. He wasn’t supposed to be here in the first place and yet, here Kovalainen was, mere feet away from Le Maestro in his natural habitat – at the wheel of a rally car.
It was the Race of Champions, 2004. Loeb had just won his first world title, Michael Schumacher was in his Formula 1 pomp with Ferrari and Grönholm had been knocked out of the competition in a head-to-head duel with Loeb in the Xsara. And some young single-seater driver from Finland no-one had really heard of was dropped into a WRC car, threaded it around the Stade de France and then beat Loeb by eight tenths of a second.
“The whole thing was such a coincidence,” Kovalainen explains to DirtFish. “I wasn’t originally going to be invited: Kimi Räikkönen, Mika Häkkinen, Mika Salo and JJ Lehto had all been invited but not gone to represent Finland, so they ended up calling me.
Kovalainen wasn't first choice to be there, but ended up becoming the star of the show
“I was still in the Nissan World Series at that point; I was a big fan of Schumacher, [David] Coulthard and Loeb. I knew of them but hadn’t met them and they weren’t my buddies at that point! I don’t think anyone knew who I was or had heard much about me.”
The Race of Champions would change that. After winning the first skirmish against Loeb in a best-of-three format, it was time to change cars and strap into a Ferrari 360 Challenge. And as he’d demonstrated earlier in the day, beating Loeb to become Champion of Champions was more realistic than it sounded.
“During practice, one of the marshals told me I’d been the quickest of all the cars out there,” says Kovalainen. “I thought…OK, that’s cool. But I didn’t have any big expectations or plans for what I might do. I’m here, I’ll enjoy being in the same changing room as Schumacher and Loeb. That’s cool!
“I ended up beating them all. I think they were as surprised as I was.”
Beating Schumacher in the racing driver section final earlier the same day had already become a life-changing moment for Kovalainen. It was the ultimate upset: Ferrari’s talisman, a seven-time world champion, was defeated by some young upstart while both were at the wheel of Ferraris.
I ended up in the same elevator as Jean Todt. He was looking at me with the side of his eye and asked in a thick French accent: ‘What was your name again?Heikki Kovalainen
“It was one of the best memories of my whole career; it’s probably a stronger memory than my only F1 win in Hungary,” said Kovalainen. “Schumacher was already the main man in F1, a legend, and I beat him in a Ferrari in front of a packed Stade de France. It must be what rockstars feel when they’re at a concert and everyone is cheering for them. I jumped on the roof of the Ferrari and was cheering like Freddie Mercury at LiveAid.
“It was incredible, trying to make sense of what was going on; I’d just beaten Schumacher and [Ferrari team principal] Jean Todt was on the big screen in the stadium, his face green and head tilted to the side wondering: who is this guy?
“We were all housed in the same nice hotel in the middle of Paris and afterwards I ended up in the same elevator as Todt. He was looking at me with the side of his eye and asked in a thick French accent: ‘What was your name again?’
“I’m Heikki Kovalainen, nice to meet you.”
One titan of motorsport defeated, it was on to Loeb. He’d already bested him in the rally car. But Loeb – naturally gifted at the wheel of pretty much anything with an engine and four wheels as his later career proved – turned the tables and outdrove Kovalainen when switching to the Ferrari 360s.
But there was another twist still.
“There was a chicane just before the crossover section,” Kovalainen explains, “because if the Ferrari took off going flat out over the crest, it would damage the car. Loeb clipped the plastic container and got a five-second penalty; there was a camera in the container and it flew off with the impact, so it was pretty apparent the penalty was coming!”
Apparent to everyone except Kovalainen at the wheel, that is. Unaware of what had happened, he’d pulled up thinking he’d lost and was preparing to swap cars for a winner-takes-all decider. He had to be interrupted and be told by the organizers: you’ve done it. You’ve beaten Sébastien Loeb.
Both the reigning Formula 1 and World Rally champion had been swept aside.
“It was such a surprise and shock, that event,” says Kovalainen. “Even though Race of Champions is mostly about entertainment, I felt that everyone at Renault – even Pat Symonds, Flavio Briatore, Alan Permane – they were quite impressed and it did a lot of good to my career inside Renault. It was a good reminder that they had a junior driver and he might be quite good.”
Though Kovalainen did end up being Formula 1-bound a few years later, he’s always been a rally fan. It was, after all, Juha Kankkunen flying through Finnish forests in a Peugeot 205 T16 that initially had him hooked on motorsport. Impressing Renault management and being a momentary thorn in Todt’s side was most important career-wise – but there was another exciting phone call that resulted from his star turn in Paris: Loeb’s team boss.
“I was contacted by Guy Fréquelin and he said ‘you’re welcome to come and test our rally car any time’ after that. We ended up doing an event with Total in 2007 with Loeb and Dani Sordo: they drove the Renault and I drove the Citroën at a promo day in Southern France.
“It did a lot of good for me in my career. You can show yourself to the world if you take full advantage of it.”
More than two decades after stunning the motorsport world, Kovalainen’s back for another crack at it; 2025 will be his fifth appearance at the Race of Champions. But this time he’s not a racing driver trying to usurp the WRC’s elite – he’s on our side of the fence now.
