When you’ve spent the last six years of your life racing, and winning, in Formula 1 with Lewis Hamilton as a team-mate, you need something else to sustain your competitive instincts.
Initially, he hoped that would be rallying. But a phone call to renowned driver manager Timo Jouhki steered him down a different path.
“I asked Timo what does he think if I start to pursue a career in WRC and seriously trying to get there? He just said to me, ‘Don’t even bother, you won’t get there, unfortunately. You’re too old already and haven’t done enough and the level is too high. You won’t have a chance, unfortunately. You just stick to racing and you’d be much better off there’.
“That’s what I did. He said it pretty bluntly, but I think he was right.”
Heikki Kovalainen would go on to win the coveted Super GT title in 2016, perhaps proving Jouhki’s advice the wise move. But the question remained: how good a rally driver could Kovalainen be?
The last few years have gone a long way to answering that question. Ever since he got his hands on an R5 car in Japan, he won the title. That 2022 success was backed up by further titles in 2023 and 2025; 2024 missing due to the open heart surgery which necessitated a six-month pause from motorsport.
He’s even competed in the WRC (albeit WRC2) at Rally Japan every year since it returned to the calendar – peaking with a fourth place in 2022 with a Škoda and also last year in a Toyota.
And that suits the 44-year-old perfectly. A man who’s competed at the very highest level can’t shake his competitive instincts, but in a rally car the Finn doesn’t feel the need to shoot for the stars at this phase of his life.
“I’m not trying to get on the WRC scene,” Kovalainen confirms to DirtFish.
“These national championships are enough and the effort that I’m ready to do is enough to be fighting in these championships, but not any higher than that.
“And that’s fine with me.”
But that’s not to say he’s not motivated by new challenges.
After capping off his time in Japan in perfect fashion – winning the final round, and the championship title with it, on his birthday – Kovalainen turns his attention to the Italian Tarmac Rally Championship this season in a Citroën C3 Rally2, starting with this weekend’s Rally Il Ciocco e Valle del Serchio.
Kovalainen's done most of his rallying in Japan, but switches to Italy for 2026
“Italy’s a motorsport country and the events are really nice,” Kovalainen explains. “The roads are great and the people are so passionate, while it’s also a lot closer to travel to than Japan.
“But I am bringing my Japanese partners over here in Europe, Aicello, speedHeart Oils and Dunlop Tyres which is nice that they follow me here. Our main objective is to start developing the Dunlop Tyres and that’s an area where I can be quite useful to them as I’ve done that a lot in Japan and during my F1 days also.”
As you’d expect, he and co-driver Patric Öhman will give it their all. But Kovalainen is very self aware when it comes to his strengths and weaknesses as a driver, and that he’s not about to become tomorrow’s superstar.
“I think that my driving has gotten better over the years,” he analyzes. “But if I don’t know the road at all, or even if I knew the road a little bit, I am still was struggling under braking.
Actually, braking areas have been my weak area even through the Formula 1 days. I was never a very good braker, if you like. I’ve always been quite gentle with the pedals, especially the initial hit on the brakes in a Formula 1 car. I was never able to match Hamilton and even other team-mates that I had when you’re arriving to a heavy braking zone and you need to get everything out of there, stop the biggest speed initially very hard and that was always a weak area for me.
Braking was never Kovalainen's strongest suit in racing, and that's carried over to rallying
“And now in rally as well, especially when the grip level is changing, to have that confidence to go to the braking areas and be confident with the brakes has been a struggle, but I feel that I’ve gotten better at that and I feel more often that I’m on the limit under braking than I was before. I think that’s probably the biggest thing.
“If I know the road, if I get enough runs that I can stretch the braking area and I pick a braking point where I know that I can work on during the test day, I get there eventually, but in the rally stages, you know, you only see a corner once or twice year after year.
“But I would say that that’s probably the biggest improvement – that the confidence has gotten better under braking and I’m sort of trusting the grip. And even if the grip isn’t there, I’m sort of trusting that I can manage the braking areas.
“And then in high-speed corners, I always feel that I’ve been pretty good,” he continues. “Even in the Formula 1 days, I was relatively good, relatively speaking, in high-speed corners compared to low-speed corners. In Japan, obviously, there werne’t a lot of high-speed corners, but in the WRC event, there were at least a few of them as well.
“The bigger roads, I feel that that’s an easier path for me. I can use more racing lines and carry a lot of speed into the corner, which is normally the way in the high-speed corners that I’d like to like to drive.
“And then of course the pacenotes are still a weakness. I’ve probably not always been making detailed enough pacenotes, but there is more information now and I think the road I’m describing more often looks like what I’ve tried to describe.
“Sometimes it doesn’t look what I’ve tried to describe, and that’s a pretty bad feeling when you go on the stage and you think, ‘f***, I’ve made way too fast-paced pacenotes or way too slow-paced notes. But I’d say that globally it has gotten better and that should also help us going to Italy.”
It’s a typically detailed debrief, but the biggest thing to know about Kovalainen is his mentality.
“Still there is room for improvements, but I’m also not putting that much effort in away from the rallies,” he shares, candidly.
“If I wanted to become a WRC driver and go to another level, I would need to probably have somebody coaching me a little bit and doing a bit more practice, and I’m not doing that. So I do realize that, and I know that there is a limitation there because I don’t do enough.
“But at the same time, it’s kind of what I’ve always thought about this rally program. I still enjoy driving and I’m still putting effort in during the rallies and I’m checking the pacenotes, working on the setup and everything. Of course, I try to concentrate on every stage like I would in a Formula 1 race. That’s still the same.
Kovalainen enjoys the thrill of driving, but he has other priorities in life too
“But between the events, I’m not putting as much effort in as I should do if I really wanted to improve many areas in the rallies. I would need to do more testing.”
But more testing would eat into precious time with his young family, and today that’s more important than results in a rally car.
Lewis Hamilton, Kimi Räikkönen and Fernando Alonso have been traded for Andrea Crugnola, Roberto Daprà and Lauri Joona. In their own right, they present the same level of challenge and Kovalainen will do his utmost to challenge them.
But he’ll go home the next day content that he’s done his best, and enjoy the position he’s in to still compete at a high level in motorsport.
