30 years on: The full story of Mika Hakkinen’s life-threatening crash in Adelaide
Mika Hakkinen was fortunate to survive a severe accident at the 1995 Australian Grand Prix in Adelaide.
Mika Hakkinen suffered one of the most serious non-fatal accidents in F1 history 30 years ago this month, and has remembered every detail in a special interview.
The two-time F1 World Champion of 1998 and ’99 was seriously injured in a severe impact with the tyre barriers lining the high-speed Brewey Bend during first qualifying for the 1995 Australian Grand Prix in Adelaide.
Mika Hakkinen remembers Adelaide crash: From impact to emergency tracheotomy
Hakkinen suffered a sudden tyre failure while negotiating Brewery Bend, a 120mph right-hand kink that linked the Bartels Road with the Brabham Straight.
His car became airborne after hitting the exit kerbs lining the corner, and the Finn smashed into the barriers at practicially unabated speed as his car had ‘skipped’ through the gravel trap. In those pre-HANS device days, the on-board footage showed Hakkinen’s head collide with sickening ferocity against the steering wheel, which broke, and against the cockpit sides.
“I don’t think I have a single day when I don’t think about it. It’s really weird,” Hakkinen recounted in a special episode of the Beyond The Grid podcast.
” It’s such a strong experience when an accident like that happens, you are so close to basically losing your life that, automatically, it’s so deeply in your memory.
“But it’s not a negative thing. I’m not thinking about it negatively, I’m a very positive person, and I’m very grateful every day about the life I’m living, what I’m experiencing, having five children, having a great time in Formula 1, all these things.
“I think the accident I had reminds me always how lucky I am to be taking part of my journey of my life, because it could have ended up very sadly 30 years ago in Adelaide.”
Hakkinen hadn’t actually lost consciousness immediately in the impact, meaning the Finn remembers, in detail, how the accident unfolded.
“Things happened very quickly, going at such a high speed, and when the rear tyre lost the air, in an F1 car, the ride height is extremely low. Only about 20 millimetres, 25 millimetres,” he said.
“So what happens when the tyre is losing air? Very suddenly, the car started bottoming very hard on the tarmac, and that means you’re definitely going to lose control. It happened when I turned into the corner, not in a straight line.
“It happened just when I turned in the corner, and this corner was an extremely high-speed corner, the corner where you have to put maximum focus, because, after that corner is a super long straight, so you need to have to get this exit perfectly right.
“So just when I turned in, I realised, ‘That’s it, I’m losing the back end’. Of course, I tried to do something with the steering, but, because it was bottoming so hard on the tarmac, the car just started sliding, off the racing line, going towards the exit of the corner, and there was a huge kerb. Nowadays, they have removed these high kerbs for safety reasons. So, when I hit that kerb, the car launched in the air and and started spinning.
“Unfortunately, the runoff area was not so big and the tyre barrier was not so wide, not so good. So, when the car was spinning, I didn’t see when the barrier was coming. Normally, when you have an accident, the moment when you’re going to hit another car or the barrier, you put all your muscles in maximum tension to hold the steering hard as you can, because the impact is is huge.
“So I didn’t see the barrier coming, because the car was spinning in the air, so, when I hit the barrier, it was very sudden. It was a surprise. That was the moment when my head moved very aggressively, when I cracked my skull, and, in the actual moment when it hit, the noise is enormous.
“I remember that moment when I was sitting in the car, I couldn’t lift my arms, I couldn’t move my legs. I realised this was serious.
“I realised what happened, and I just told myself, ‘Mika, just don’t do anything’. Well, I couldn’t even move. But, for some reason, my brain told me not to move. Stay calm and wait when people come to help you. Luckily, at that particular corner, there were all the emergency team, all the doctors, and they were there like in 15-20 seconds, they were there immediately helping me. Then they realised I couldn’t breathe.”
Hakkinen had remained alert up to that point, despite having suffered a fractured skull, internal bleeding, and a blocked airway. While he was sitting calmly in the cockpit awaiting the attentions of the emergency services, he was unaware that his life had just seconds left due to his inability to breathe.
But, fortunately for Hakkinen, the first responders to the crash were volunteer doctors Jerome Cockings, an intensive care specialisti, and Steve Lewis, a neurosurgeon, from the nearby Royal Adelaide Hospital.
Recognising the enormity of Hakkinen’s injuries, and the threat of brain damage and death should the Finn’s brain not receive oxygen immediately, Cockings took a surgical knife from his kit and sliced a hoke in Hakkinen’s throat to intubate him, while awaiting the arrival of F1’s senior doctor, Professor Sid Watkins, who was making his way to the scene in the Medical Car.
“That was the moment they gave me [an emergency tracheotomy]. I remember the pain, and then I passed out. [I was conscious until they put a hole in my throat],” Hakkinen said.
Watkins arrived to the scene, helping Cockings and Lewis as they fought to get Hakkinen’s condition under immediate control before his evacuation to the hospital, Watkins intervening directly to help restart Hakkinen’s heart twice.
At home in Finland, almost 12 hours behind, Hakkinen’s family awoke to the news of his calamitous accident, as pictures showing a bloodied and clearly injured driver being lifted from his car began to circulate around the globe.
“What comes to my mind, actually, when I see that picture, is that the accident happened in Australia, and, because of the time difference with Finland, it was very early morning,” Hakkinen said.
“My parents knew that I had a big accident, but they didn’t know exactly how serious it was. When my mother went to the shopping centre in the morning, the newspaper had this picture on the front cover, so she nearly had a heart attack. It was a terrible moment for her, for my parents, and for my sister, because they didn’t know exactly how I was.
“They knew that motorsport is dangerous. They knew that there are risks, but they always supported me. I think my father was more scared than my mother, they always told me to go flat out. So it was my choice of my life and choice of my work, what I decided to take. So they were supporting, they knew my talent, they knew I had a great opportunity in the future to win races and to fulfill my dream. So they were very supportive.”
The journey of recovery begins for Mika Hakkinen
Having survived the first night and the immediate threat to his life, Hakkinen regained consciousness the next day as doctors began exploring the full extent of the injuries he had suffered.
“I think I woke up probably the next day, if I remember correctly,” he said.
“I remember all the pipes and all these in my wrists and in my arms, all the tubes. Of course, I was on heavy medication. It was awful, I was puking blood, and, when I woke up, it was a very unpleasant feeling, but I didn’t really feel any pain. That was just because they give me such a heavy medication.
“Ron Dennis [McLaren team boss] and his then-wife Lisa Dennis came to see me and, when I saw Lisa, a blonde-haired woman, I thought that she was an angel. That’s it. I’m in heaven, you know? It was a shocking moment, that’s what I remember.
“Their faces were shocked because they knew that this was mega-serious.”
Hakkinen had learned, to his relief, that the accident had not been a driver error, with Dennis explaining that it had been a sudden puncture that had sent his McLaren barrelling into the wall.
But he was only at the start of his journey of recovery.
“I was in hospital for one and a half to two months. Most of the time spending time in the hospital was in Australia, then in England, I was in hospital a week or two,” he said.
“Because when you have a accident and bang your head, your brain, the hospital needs to do all kind of different tests that everything functions in your brain. One side of my face was paralysed, so they were testing if the nerves are completely broken or just bruised. So they put the needles through your skin and your face to check your nerves.
“If the nerves are broken, of course, you don’t feel nothing. But, luckily, they were bruised, but when they put the needles through your skin in your nerve, it was like Mike Tyson punching your head. It was a terrible experience, so many MRI scans of your head, your neck to see how serious it is.
“It was very slow process. It just takes a super long time. Maybe one and a half months later, I started understanding what state I was in because they start reducing the medication all the time, less and less. When they do that, then comes the pain, the headaches, that was one of the hardest part to handle the headaches, because it was just 24/7 constant headaches.
“Everybody have experienced headaches and you can imagine how unpleasant it is. So I think one and a half to two months later, I started recovering, but the doctor said that I’m not allowed to start jogging, start lifting weights, you’re not allowed to put any pressure in your body. It was very difficult.
“Finally, when I got back to Monaco, sitting on the terrace looking at the beautiful lights in Monaco in the evening and wondering, ‘Is this it? This is my life now’. You start asking questions from yourself, what do you want from your life?
In a separate interview with Motorsport Magazine, the Finn shed further light on the extent of the damage that had been done to him.
“It was nasty. At first, because of the pain, I was thinking, ‘I’m going to die, I’m going to die,’” he said.
“My whole life was looking at my watch to see when was it time for them to turn the valve in my drip for the next dose of drugs. The accident had damaged the nerves in my face and I couldn’t move my eyelids, so they had to tape my eyes shut to help me try to sleep. I couldn’t drink properly because my mouth didn’t work, so the water just fell out of my mouth. It was disgusting. I remember thinking, ‘This doesn’t look good.’ It wasn’t, ‘Will I be able to race again?’ It was, ‘Will I ever be able to live a normal life?’
Mika Hakkinen and his return to an F1 cockpit
Adelaide 1995 had been the last race of the championship and, with winter breaks far longer back then than they are now, Hakkinen was in a position to remain focused on recuperation before the inevitable question of whether he could make a return for McLaren for the 1996 season was raised.
“I didn’t want to even think about it. I really didn’t want to think about it,” Hakkinen said.
“But Adelaide was the last Grand Prix of the year. So that meant I had a time to recover. A couple of months later, McLaren had to ask me, ‘Mika, do you want to come back to racing?’
“Otherwise they had to find another driver, you know? I spoke to family, I spoke to management, and I was looking at all those years what I have done in motor racing, starting when I was six years old as a little boy.
“I had got so far in my career now. I’m in a great team at McLaren, and there’s no way I can just now give up. I cannot. I cannot give up. I was very confident with my talent, my performance, so I put the thumbs up to McLaren and said, ‘Okay, let’s do the test. Let’s try what I gonna feel and how it goes’.
Thankfully for Hakkinen, his family, friends, and then-girlfriend Erja had no qualms about whatever decision the headstrong Finn would make for himself.
“It was no problem, because they knew me. It’s my decision. They were all supporting,” he said.
“‘Mika, if you feel like that, and if you decide to do that, we will support you. We all understood the risks of motorsport’.
“Of course, I don’t know exactly what they felt inside in themselves, but they were supporting me when I decided to go back to racing, to even to try to do testing what I gonna feel.”
The key test would be an outing at Paul Ricard in the south of France, with Hakkinen showing up to answer the questions of the team, and himself, just 87 days after his impact with the barriers in Adelaide.
“I was nervous, of course. I was nervous driving with my car heading to the racetrack at Paul Ricard,” he said.
“One thing I was really, really nervous about, because all my mechanics were there, so they remembered what Mika looked like in the time before the accident, my blonde hair.
“In the hospital, they had to shave 50 percent of my hair off, the other side was still paralysed. I saw the mechanics’ faces when I entered the garage.
“They were looking like, ‘Oh no, this guy is not going to make it’. So that was, for me, quite unpleasant. I tried to be normal and tried to act normal.
“I had lost a lot of weight, on a lot of medication, so my physical condition had dropped like 50 percent.
“When I was racing, my weight was probably around, maximum, around 70 kilos. I’m sure I lost like seven to 10 kilos. So I was super skinny. Some of the problems, losing some hearing because, in the accident, the little bones inside in your brain in the ears broke, so they had to build some artificial bones inside the ears.
“So I needed to have a operations in England, in USA in the Mayo Clinic, two operations. So all those were part of the journey for recovering and and it was quite a challenge.
“But one thing I really have to say was what Ron Dennis did, what the McLaren team did, what Mansour Ojjeh’s family and both men’s friends did. I was given a private plane to take me to different places before I came back to Europe.
“Keke Rosberg, my management, they were able to take care of me, and, of course, my family. It was just amazing what they did for me. They really gave me the peace, the space to recover. It was just mega.”
Despite his trepidation, and despite the unexpressed concerns of the mechanics in the McLaren test garage, Hakkinen knew within a few minutes of hitting the track that his F1 career had not concluded.
“It was very difficult but then came the time to put the overalls on, put the racing shoes on. I was nervous, but then going into the car, putting the helmet on, I was looking at the car… absolutely fantastic. Tailor-made, the quality McLaren does, you know?” he said.
“They started the engine, absolutely amazing. Going out of the garage, I felt like, ‘Wow, this is beautiful’. I put my foot down, I went flat out, straight away. Everything was automatic. Everything felt good.
“But that day, when I was going through high-speed corners, I was thinking, ‘What if something breaks? I’m gonna hit that wall’.
“Then I thought to myself, ‘Mika, stop thinking about it. This is the test, take that out of your mind. Just focus on the driving’.
“It really worked. Why it worked? In my opinion, it was because I wanted to win, I wanted to be a world champion, I said, ‘Do not think about you’re going to have accident or something breaks. Trust the car, trust the team’.”
Completing 63 laps, Hakkinen’s best time was half a second faster than what Michael Schumacher had managed in his Ferrari the day before.
“I was quick. I was immediately quick,” he said.
“The car was just incredible. I was able to put myself on the edge. I was able to put the car on the edge, straight away. I don’t know, maybe I’m bloody stupid, I just wanted to show the team that we’re gonna kick some ass.
“I informed the team immediately after the test, that we’d go for the fight. Let’s continue our journey together, you know? It was very clear in my mind, it was super good. I made the decision. I’m a very active person, I love to do things. There’s no way I could stop racing.”
Having fought hard to get to the point of being able to drive a car again, Hakkinen’s physical fitness was getting better and better as he had returned to running despite suffering intense headaches, and a big question for the Finn was whether or not the accident would have any detrimental effect on his lifespan.
“I did speak to doctors in hospital, and I said, ‘Is my life going to be shorter now? Am I going to live a normal life for the rest of my life?. I was told there was no problem, I’m fine, I will live a normal life,” he said.
“‘This accident is not going to make your life shorter. If you go back to racing again, something can happen’. But if something happens, my condition or how I would be even without the accident, it’s no difference. So I was not worried about that.”
A new attitude: Mika Hakkinen hits the top, and walks away from F1
Hakkinen made his return to F1 at the start of 1996, making his way to Australia once again to kick off the new season at a new event and racetrack in Melbourne.
The season turned out to be his highest point to date, scoring 31 points as a regular points scorer and podium finisher.
On paper, it was a great season but, despite having finished fifth in his first race back, Hakkinen was disguising just how much he was struggling.
“It was very difficult physically, no way I was not there. I was not physically there,” he said.
“I would say 1996… I remember many of my seasons quite well, actually but, ’96, my brain was in a fog, I wasn’t there 100 percent, it was very unpleasant. I needed to really push over my limits, physically and mentally, to go through that year.”
Not helping the matter was the fact that Hakkinen had been paired with a new and hungry teammate in David Coulthard, who had arrived as an established front-runner from Williams. Fearing that he could lose the upper hand within the squad to Coulthard, Hakkinen refused to reveal the full extent of just how much he was having to push himself to keep up with the challenge.
“Coulthard was my teammate, a young Scottish guy kicking my ass, so it was really, really challenging,” he said.
“That made my life even more harder. I was not physically there, I was mentally fighting all the time with my confidence.
“And Coulthard was there, absolutely flat out, every single time when he went out, testing, a race, he was always there, he was just on maximum focus with the engineers. And I was still in recovering mode.
“So the ’96 year was like I was all the time physically on edge, you know? So when I came home from the Grand Prix, I was exhausted. I tried to recover as quick as I could, going back to Monaco, but it wasn’t easy.
“I was still tired, and trying not to think about my accident, trying to focus on the future and the moment when I was living. It wasn’t easy. It was just taking a lot of energy.”
As for when he finally felt he had shaken off the effects of his Adelaide crash, Hakkinen said it coincided with McLaren’s rise to become a frontrunner during 1997.
“It took at least one year. I think ’97, halfway through the season,” he said.
“I started feeling like then I start feeling that now I’m strong. Now, I’m confident. Now, I learn from my mistakes, I’m more experienced than ever.
“The team was doing great decisions in terms of people, who they were hiring, investing money inside the team for the materials. Mercedes-Benz was getting stronger in their performance, so I felt good and strong.
“I think ’99 was the year when I started feeling like I’m in absolutely highest performance ever. It took a really long time to get 100 percent so, when you do have accident like this, unfortunately it takes years to come back to your maximum strength.
“When you are a Formula 1 driver, you are athletic, and you have heard the stories that when athletics people go to their competition, if they have a flu, it can take months until they come back to same level in their performance.
“Well, I didn’t have a flu. It was a bit more serious than that, so it took me a couple of years to come up with the ultimate performance.”
McLaren, with technical director Adrian Newey, became championship challengers in 1998, with Hakkinen emerging as the number one driver to defeat Michael Schumacher and clinch his maiden title. A year later, he repeated the feat, this time against Ferrari’s Eddie Irvine as Schumacher had missed several races with a broken leg.
2000, despite losing to Schumacher, was arguably Hakkinen’s finest season as he and his Ferrari rival pushed each other to tremendous heights but, in 2001, it was clear that Hakkinen had peaked. While there were still high points throughout 2001, Coulthard emerged as the lead McLaren driver and the Finn opted to walk away at season end; obstencibly, for a career sabbatical.
“I decided [at the end of 2001] that I was now two times world champion, and if I had an accident like what I had in Adelaide, maybe I’m not going to walk anymore. Maybe it could be even more serious. So now it’s time to to stop,” he said of that decision.
Fans were left on tenterhooks through 2002, wondering whether Hakkinen would decide to return to F1, a decision no less eagerly anticipated by Dennis. But Hakkinen knew almost immediately that his decision to leave F1 was final.
“Ron knew that, losing me from the team, he was going to lose an important asset for the team in terms of marketing, in terms of performance, the team knew me very well,” he said.
“So Ron said to me just to think about it, take one year off, relax, and chill out.
“But it didn’t take a long time. It didn’t take too many months until I realised there was no way I could go back. My mind was thinking about the danger. My mind was thinking about accidents, and what about if [Adelaide] happens again?
“I was just purely thinking about life outside of motor racing, there’s so much to life and what life can give me. Formula 1 is not everything, because, if you want to be a champion in Formula 1, you have to give 100 percent.
“You know you cannot have anything else in your life. So I thought, I don’t want to go on that journey anymore. I wanted to explore other things in my life.”
While Hakkinen’s racing career wasn’t quite over as he returned to race with Mercedes in DTM, his F1 racing career had come to a conclusion; miraculously, he had seized his chance, through sheer force of will, to realise the innate potential within himself and deliver at his best, rewarding McLaren for its faith in him so soon after his life-threatening accident.
As he got older, how much did Adelaide 1995 linger in the back of his mind as a millstone? Were there ever any risky moments he backed out of, having had the experience of a sudden car failure once almost kill him?
“Attitude towards risks, not really, I don’t think so,” he said, when asked if his risk-taking attitude had changed.
“I think it just changed me in terms of [being] human, you know?
“I think I started listening to people much more, I was extremely selfish. Before the accident, my ego was extremely high. Confidence was high, and now suddenly, after the accident, I slowed down a bit.
“I started listening more to what the people are saying, thinking twice what I was doing.
“I don’t say it made me smarter, but it taught me to appreciate the time I’m living and appreciate the time with people. I think that those are the little things and big things how they changed me.
“I think the only thing that changed when I did start winning in Formula 1, when I started getting pole positions and when I managed to become a world champion, that was the time that changed me; I had reached my goal.
“When I start taking risks on a racetrack afterwards, when I had a mechanical failures and hitting walls very hard, that was the moment when I start thinking about whether I was pushing my luck too far.”
Hakkinen remains a beloved figure in the F1 paddock, one who still shows up regularly to events while showing support for his beloved McLaren team, and has never shied away from talking about the day his love of the sport almost claimed his life.
For the Finn, it’s that openness and willingness to discuss it that has helped him mentally process the enormity of what had happened to him.
“It depends what kind of trauma or accident, the best thing is just to talk about it. Talk about it,” he said.
“Select the right friends around you and go for it. Never give up. Absolutely. Keep fighting and continue your journey, continue your dreams of your life, and that’s what you have to do, never stop.”
Hakkinen’s recovery from his accident saw him go to great lengths to show his gratitude to the Royal Adelaide Hospital. Donating a significant financial sum to help build a helipad at the hospital, this supported the facilities’ ability to respond to trauma cases throughout the last 30 years, particularly in its ability to receive critically injured patients from accidents in remote areas.
Hakkinen visited Australia in March 1997 in order to attend the official opening of the helipad and reunite with the emergency responders who helped save his life.
