HAKKINEN: TALENT AND LAWYERS WIN IT
In the late 1980s, WSR ran a string of Marlborobacked talents in British F3. That continued in 1990, when Mika Hakkinen starred to defeat fellow Finn Mika Salo to the crown. But there was a worrying time before the mid-summer Oulton Park round.
“I got a phone call at my home about nine o’clock at night. ‘Immigration Terminal 2 here, is that Mr Bennetts?’ ‘Speaking.’ ‘We have a Mr Ha-haa-ha-kki-nen here.’ ‘Oh yeah, Mika. What’s the problem?’ ‘We’re not letting him in, he’s got to go back to Finland.’ I said, ‘Woah you can’t do that, we’ve got a race this weekend.’ He said, ‘We’ve warned him five times to get a visa, and he’s come back again, he still hasn’t got one, so we’re putting him on a plane.’ I said, ‘No you can’t do that, please please please.’ I got down on my hands and knees, and they let him in on the condition that he went straight away and got sorted out.
“On the Friday he had to go and see Philip Morris [Marlboro parent company] and sort out a lawyer to start getting the visas done. We were testing on the Friday at Oulton, and the rumour went down the pitlane that Mika was sent back to Finland, because his car was sitting there in the pitlane. We were running Christian Fittipaldi, trying to sort out a new rear wing. Christian said, ‘That’s better’, so we bolted it onto Mika’s car. And then about quarter to five Mika comes rushing into the track. I said, ‘Right, get changed, get in the car. Quick. You’ve got about seven minutes left.’
“So out he went slowly, bedded the brake pads, and then boom. Quickest. P1. I’ll never forget Steve Robertson’s dad Dave coming down and saying, ‘We’re all wasting our effing time. We thought we were in for a good weekend, that bloke turns up, does five laps and goes P1.’ They’d all been pounding round all day.
That was a wake-up call for everyone.”