Jonathan Noble: Off Line

If Heikki Kovalainen had offered to take you and your money out to the Montreal Casino on race morning in Canada, you would probably have replied with an emphatic no.

There are times in life when the only luck a racing driver has is bad luck, and Kovalainen appeared unable to shake it off throughout the Canadian Grand Prix weekend.

First he got caught up in a mini media storm after a jokey remark he'd made was taken seriously by certain websites. Then he hit the wall in Friday practice, had an engine failure on Saturday morning and shunted in qualifying to line up at the back of the grid.

With F1 being such a ruthless sport, it inevitably fuelled speculation that the Finn was facing the risk of being 'rested', to make way for test driver Nelson Piquet Jr.

Weaker men would have let the pressure get to them, maybe get too aggressive in the race, start locking wheels, run across the grass and perhaps get involved in a race-ending collision. In fact, just what we saw from Kovalainen in Australia with a performance that left team boss Flavio Briatore questioning whether his driver had been replaced by his brother.

Kovalainen bounced back from that Melbourne mauling, and in Canada he did exactly the same. Running slightly less wing to aid top speed (and his overtaking chances), he and the team opted to run their supersoft tyres in the middle stint.

The result? A remarkable climb from 22nd on the grid to fourth at the finish.

The relief was obvious, even though Kovalainen was keen to make it clear that he was not feeling any more pressure to perform than normal.

"Many other people were sending me home already, and a lot of talk in the press was in a negative way," said Kovalainen, commenting on his feelings in the build-up to the race. "But honestly I was very committed to give the maximum effort for a good race and, when you start from the back of the grid, you can only do really good races from there.

"I prepared normally, did not have big emotions, and I was always confident in my own ability. What was happening was not going to take my confidence away. I showed today I can cope with the different pressures of F1. Even if people are saying whatever, it doesn't affect me at all. I can keep my concentration and do a good job for the team."

Some insiders have suggested that Kovalainen's main weakness is in getting too flustered when things go wrong on a race weekend, resulting in him not necessarily cracking under pressure but simply becoming too aggressive when a bit of calm, consistent driving would be the best thing.

It has been hard this year to really see if that is true, especially with him suffering from the kind of poor luck that he endured in Montreal.

"It's a little bit frustrating, but all I can do at the moment is stay calm and keep my head up," he said of his misfortune to be the driver at Renault who suffers the problems. "But I've kept my full confidence. Of course, for others it might be hard to believe after some difficult races and some bad results.

"But in any case, everybody in the team is keeping their head up and I feel like people still believe in me 100 per cent. And the results will come. But it's very important to analyse what has happened, to make sure we learn from everything and that it doesn't happen again in Indianapolis or any other races."

It's not easy being a rookie in Formula 1 these days if your name is not Lewis Hamilton. But Kovalainen proved in Canada that Renault was more than right to take the gamble on him this season.