Interview with Mika Hakkinen

From his excitement the day before the test, to the fact that he did not leave McLaren's garage until gone 11pm the night prior to the run, there was little doubt that Hakkinen was revelling in his chance to taste F1 machinery again and offer something back to the team that he had shared so much success with.

Although he ended his F1 comeback at the bottom of the timesheets, Hakkinen was far from unhappy about how his first day back went.

And, after a short visit to the team's fitness trainer for a post-session massage on his neck, autosport.com heard from the two-times champion about how his return had gone, and whether he is hungry for more F1 action.

Q. How was your day back in the car?

Mika Hakkinen: It was a good day, an excellent day. I think it was exciting, that is the right word. I did nearly 80 laps, which is a lot at Barcelona. There are a lot of right hand corners, long corners, where the G-load is quite high. Barcelona is quite demanding physically, so I am quite happy to have done so many laps. The neck is okay. It is okay.

In the morning we were not able to start the programme in a normal way. We wanted to start to get into the F1 car again, but we had some problems (engine mapping) occur. So we had to work all morning, until lunchtime, to find the right setting and different solutions - getting the right numbers to make driving smoother and better. And we did a great job, I have to admit. I really enjoyed the work, and I got the impression that the team was very happy. That was a good point.

Q. Who was more impressed, you or the team?

MH: I don't know. I think you can always say that from the outside people look at the lap times and they get easily impressed by what the drivers do. But in this case, I think if you speak to any team member, the best valuable comment what they could give to you guys was what they felt from the day.

We did manage to make changes, which they hadn't done for a long time. The purpose was not to impress anybody enormously, it was just to get 100 percent a good feeling with the car and understand if it has changed a lot since 2001. Surprisingly the changes were very little.

Q. So what has changed?

MH: Obviously there are a lot more electronics on the car. You can adjust them to help the corners, high speed and slow, which is good but at the same time negative. It can be very confusing. Today you play with all these electronics and I think at the end of it you don't know which way you are turning anymore.

So you really have to have a good experience and a calm mind. You have to stay fully focused on the operations of the car, and not to make mistakes. Once you turn those buttons it can influence the lap times - half a second or even a second. Even a driver may not notice it, but driving on the track it is very critical.

Q. What about the engine? Is there any difference. How did you feel with the V8?

MH: We were looking a lot at the engine this morning - on the mapping of the engine to smooth it and we did a good work. That is a good question actually...I think with the V10 it had more explosive power coming out. When you had really high rpm, the torque was very impressive.

It seems like you have less, but I don't want to say that is the case. I think technology has gone forward, so the driveability is so smooth. So the drivers don't feel any more the big transitions in power areas. It is so smooth, and also with the electronics it feels fantastic, so it is interesting.

I think Mercedes-Benz has done a good work, and the engine we used here is not the final specification engine. They are still developing it, so there are certain areas in the engine that need to get developed. But so far we did not have any problems.

Q. Does this test make you hungry for another test?

MH: Automatically, yes. Because you get more understanding of the braking points, the turning in points, the acceleration and the set-up. And getting to know the people better, understanding who is doing what, and what tools are available for adjusting. I only used one set of tyres, whereas others used four to five sets.

So it was very difficult. Having just one set I prefer that in one way, because it meant I lived in a difficult situation all the time, as when you get a new set it suddenly becomes a paradise. Obviously the team gave me the option of new tyres, but I did not have the confidence to go hard, to see what the tyres could do.

Q. How are the tyres?

MH: I was positively impressed. Certainly I heard the rumours and the discussion in F1 about how the cars were going to be changed by the new tyres. But actually it was quite nice compared with Michelin. They don't seem to have a negative effect. Obviously they were on Michelins, so it was difficult to say, but in general everybody was quite happy about it and how they behaved.

This is the very first test, so it is still early days. A lot of adjustment has to be made to get the best out of the car, and this compound may be the one we are going to use in Barcelona. I don't know.

Q. What about your feeling in the car? Was it easy to get adjusted to the speed again?

MH: It was not easy in the first place, because we had problems in the morning. It was very tricky to keep the car on the track in the morning. It was not what I had expected. In the pits I explained everything to the team and they started to investigate what was going on.

They looked at the data and they found we had a serious problem. There was the maximum work effort from the engine people, the gearbox people and the data people. They started looking hard, because the team had changed the engine from yesterday to today, so everything had changed. The whole morning was just spent adjusting.

Q. Maybe it makes sense to test another day then...

MH: I fully agree with you. Naturally to start doing a second test or more tests I will get stronger and quicker. I will have more knowledge about what tools we can use and can help more for the future. But I don't know. We have to discuss and think about it. And see what happens.

Q. Having driven all day, have you got the answers you had asked yourself before?

MH: Yes, but now I have more questions! I got the answers for the questions I had, but now I have more - like how to make the car better? The way the car was behaving, there are things to be improved. The team, the driver, the car can always be better. That is the case with me, the car could be better. So automatically we need to discuss with the engineers better, but I have a lot of answers for my questions.

Q. So we will see more of you in testing then?

MH: I really don't know what the team says about this. Let's see what we can do.

Q. What was the car like? Was it neutral or oversteering?

MH: Basically with the Bridgestone characteristics they are understeery generally, compared to last year where it was more pointy on the entry, oversteery in the exit and a bit of understeer in mid-corner. So if that is the case then obviously those things are big issues. I started off with Pedro de la Rosa's set-up this morning and modified it quite a lot. Then again, these are very early stages.

I don't mean to say Pedro's set-up was not good. I don't think that is fair to say. But the most important thing for me was to get more laps and speed. But obviously there were lots of things on the track today when we were working in certain areas to make the car behave like my driving style. But the time was a bit short. We will share the thoughts, so that the team can improve for next time.

Q. Your future is still the DTM still?

MH: My answer is still the same. We will see...

Q. Were you happy with the lap times?

MH: If the timesheet was upside down I would be happier! But it looks actually good. Yes, I mean after five years to come back in F1 and to go very hard, flat out, I think I would make mistakes. The risk would be damaging the car.

That would first of all not look professional and I don't think I would learn anything then. The exercise here was to learn, give feedback to the engineers so that they can improve the car. You don't have to go for the ultimate lap time to improve the car in certain areas.

In other areas, yes you have to go 100 percent, to improve, and it would have been better to have a better lap time, but I think it would be unfair for the people to expect that automatically after five years I could go maximum attack and bang in a time.

Maybe with the fuel level down to a minimum, maybe then we could get down to a good lap time. But that was not the intention. The plan was to run the same fuel level all the time, which are high enough to work on the race configuration.

Maybe if we had a new set of tyres then maybe the lap time could have been 1.2 to two seconds faster. But we did not do that because Lewis was on a certain programme with the tyres. That (lap times) was not the issue. I don't think we should talk about it.

Q. Was the driving fun? Did it fire some emotions again?

MH: Yes definitely. It was an emotional situation. I had memories of the past, but it was very interesting. I think the car, the way it is behaving at the moment was the best possible balance for everyone running the tyres for the first time.

I don't think I drove the car in an ultimate shape. It is early days. If I tested two months later then I would have a lot less problems, and the driving could have been much easier. Now it was not so easy.

I enjoyed it though. It was good, very tough. Barcelona is also an interesting circuit, changing directions at very high speed. Everything was a bit on the limit, and that was good. I like that.