Heikki Kovalainen passed fit to compete in Turkish Grand Prix

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At noon yesterday there was at least one happy man at the Istanbul Park Formula One pits, namely Finland’s Heikki Kovalainen, who had just been cleared by the FIA doctors to race in the Turkish GP over the weekend.
     
The decision was preceded by a 30-minute physical examination, in which functions of Kovalainen’s brain and physique were tested. The results were then compared to those measured at the beginning of Kovalainen’s career, in order to be sure that he had suffered no ill-effects from his high-speed shunt in Barcelona.
      "I got even higher scores this time”, the McLaren pilot said with a delighted grin.
     
At no stage was Kovalainen worried about passing the examination.
      “I was completely certain of it. I feel one hundred per cent, and I have been practising since last Saturday. And I started moving around already in Barcelona”, Kovalainen told Helsingin Sanomat.
     
Kovalainen stayed in Spain to rest there until Thursday of last week. “I was still suffering from headaches, so we decided that I should not get on a plane just yet”, the driver explained.
      “When the aches started to ease off on Thursday, we flew to Finland. From Saturday till Tuesday I was training in Kuortane.”
      Kovalainen has seen his accident on video.
      “Not that many times, but a few times anyway, just to get an idea of what happened.”
     
Of the actual crash, Kovalainen still cannot remember a thing.
      “I have a three-hour memory gap there”, Kovalainen said. “All I remember is how I started my lap out in front when others entered the pits ahead of me.”
      Kovalainen was conscious when doctors and marshals arrived at the scene to extricate him from the tyre wall and the car.
      “I spoke with them and helped to remove my helmet. But none of this was saved to my hard drive, apparently. The next thing I can recall is that I was lying in a hospital intensive care unit surrounded by a lot of people. I asked Aki Hintsa (McLaren team physician) what this all meant."
      “I was definitely slightly out to lunch”, Kovalainen continued. “But then it all started to come together, once I realised that I could move my limbs and nothing was broken. Only my head was hurting since I had bumped it.”
     
Unlike the driver himself, his parents were somewhat alarmed by the high-speed accident, which was apparently caused by a wheel malfunction on the McLaren, rendering the man behind the wheel a helpless passenger.
      “It probably looked worse than what it really was”, Kovalainen contemplated, and anyone who has studied the countless clips of the shunt on YouTube would probably agree - it certainly did not look good.
      “Had I not hit my head I probably would have walked away from the accident scene on my own two feet [instead of on a stretcher]. Now it would be a good idea to give my mother a better Mother’s Day present this Sunday than a call from the hospital saying that I have crashed again.”
     
Kovalainen is more than eager to get back behind the wheel. Already from the championship table point of view it is important that the Finn is allowed to compete in Turkey.
      “But I’m still annoyed about what happened in Barcelona”, Kovalainen stated. “At that point I still had plenty of fuel left.”
     
Kovalainen’s teammate Lewis Hamilton also reported in Istanbul that the Finn was OK.
      “No need to worry much about Heikki”, Hamilton said. “Up in Kuortane we enjoyed a game of bowling and he beat me all ends up”, the British driver reported ruefully.
      Heikki Kovalainen is currently in 6th place in the drivers' championship table, with 14 points. The winner in Barcelona, Ferrari's Kimi Räikkönen, head the listings with 29 points, nine ahead of Hamilton and eleven ahead of his Ferrari teammate Felipe Massa.
      Massa and Räikkönen enjoyed a Ferari 1-2 victory in Istanbul last year.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Räikkönen increases his lead in F1 drivers´ table with comfortable win in Barcelona (28.4.2008)

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Helsingin Sanomat