Aki Hintsa: McLaren's F1 doctor who was so much more

F1

Behind the F1 championship successes of Mika Häkkinen and Lewis Hamilton stood Aki Hintsa, says Matt Bishop. McLaren's team doctor developed a pioneering fitness regime, but was also a rock in turbulent times. His influence is still felt, seven years after his untimely death

Aki Hintsa portrait
Author

Matt Bishop

It was in the Suzuka paddock, in late October 1998, in the days when I was still a full-time Formula 1 journalist, that, halfway through an interview I was doing with Ron Dennis, the McLaren boss introduced me to a craggy-faced Finn, as a result of his briefly interrupting our dialogue. “I’m so sorry to step in, but I need to speak to you urgently, Ron,” he said. Dennis stood up, put his hand on the man’s shoulder, and guided him to a distance wherefrom they could speak in private without my overhearing. Three or four minutes later Ron returned. “That’s Aki,” he said, “a first-class individual.”

Dr Aki Hintsa was indeed that. He had been introduced to McLaren earlier that year, as the team’s travelling physician, to assist and support David Coulthard and, in particular, Mika Häkkinen, a fellow Finn, who was quicker than Coulthard but quieter, not as physically strong, and in some ways less psychologically robust. Was that surprising? No, it was not. Coulthard’s journey to a seat in one of McLaren’s fast and beautiful 1998 MP4-13s had been linear and relatively mishap-lite. He had made his F1 debut with Williams in 1994, had immediately impressed, and had won one race and bagged seven further podiums for the Grove team the following year. In 1996 he had moved to McLaren, had stood on two podiums, and had won two races and bagged two further podiums for the Woking team the following year.

By contrast, Häkkinen had arrived in F1 in 1991, in a Lotus team well past its best, and had failed to qualify for two races before — at his 32nd attempt — he had finally found himself standing on an F1 podium for the first time. His first two McLaren years had been tough: in 1994 neither he nor his team-mate Martin Brundle had much enjoyed the unreliable Peugeot V10 that their McLaren MP4/9s had been saddled with, and in 1995 he had very nearly died in his McLaren MP4/10, at Adelaide, saved by FIA medical delegate Sid Watkins and his colleagues, who had performed a trackside emergency tracheotomy on him and had had to restart his heart not once but twice. He had been transported to the Royal Adelaide Hospital, in whose neurological unit he had been treated by its trauma surgeons, remaining there for two months. He had made a full physical recovery, but, even so, such experiences rarely leave drivers, or anyone else for that matter, mentally unscathed.

David Coulthard with Mika Hakkinen at 1997 McLaren F1 car launch

Hintsa initially worked with Coulthard and Häkkinen, pictured here in 1997

Bongarts/Getty Images

Unsurprisingly, therefore, Hintsa worked very closely with Häkkinen, focusing on bolstering the holistic totality of his fitness, not merely the physical aspects. But he worked with Coulthard, too, and with McLaren’s test drivers, and eventually with the entire team. I joined it in January 2008, and it was immediately clear to me that, although he shunned the limelight, he was a crucial positive influence on our two drivers, Heikki Kovalainen, another Finn, and, in particular, Lewis Hamilton. Over the next few years, despite his fairytale world championship success at Interlagos in 2008, Lewis suffered almost as many disasters as triumphs – the fallout from ‘spy-gate’, the anguish of ‘lie-gate’, as well as various other tricky issues and incidents along the way — but Aki was always there, as solid as a rock, as sound as a pound, ready with wise and well chosen words of advice. He was much more than the team’s doctor by then. In many ways he was the team’s anchor.

From the archive

His background had prepared him for just such a role, although he did not know it at the time. A promising teenage ice hockey player in his native Finland, he had tried but failed to make the grade as a pro. Disappointed but undaunted, he threw his competitive enthusiasm at the medical world, entered med school in Turku, south-west Finland, in 1977, and graduated in 1983. First he practised as a doctor in his home country, and soon he broadened that remit to include working with the Finnish Olympic team. But he was religious, too, and gradually he felt a divine summons not only to stay true to his Hippocratic oath but also to combine it with something akin to a crusading fervour. So in 1992 he took the lion-hearted decision to move to Ethiopia, which was at that time not only a wretchedly poor country but was also recovering from a 17-year civil war and multiple droughts, the combination of which had plunged it into a severe famine.

Ethiopia changed him. He saw terrible things there. The experience made him remarkable, perhaps unique. He worked as a doctor, and a missionary too, both jobs forcing him to confront human suffering on a monstrous scale. In addition, ever the sportsman, over time he began not only to work with but also to learn from the country’s world-class long-distance runners. To say that they impressed him would be an understatement. No, he admired them, indeed he revered them. Nonetheless, he was still able to help them. Gradually, the work that he did with them took on a pattern, a shape, and finally a philosophy: he called it ‘the circle of better life’. It came to him one evening, in a flash. He drew a circle and, ranged around its circumference, he wrote the following six locutions: physical activity, nutrition, sleep/recovery, biomechanics, mental energy, general health. Then in the middle he wrote the word ‘core’. It was that circle of better life that he took to McLaren in 1998. It is that circle of better life that the medics of the company he founded, Hintsa Performance, still apply in the work they do today with athletes who compete at the highest level in dozens of sports, including but not limited to F1.

Lewis Hamilton with Aki Hintsa

Hintsa with Lewis Hamilton in 2013; he had a key role in the seven-time champion’s early success

Alamy

Perhaps he should still be working for McLaren, or Hamilton, now; but he is not. He is not because he contracted pancreatic cancer in the summer of 2015 and died on November 17 the following year, aged 58, which means that this coming Friday will mark seven years since his passing. Knowing that the type of cancer he had was one of the most aggressive, he nonetheless faced it with magnificent courage and good humour. He attended the Italian Grand Prix at Monza just two months before he died, and, although he did not call it a goodbye visit, we all knew that it was; even so, his broad smile and infectious chuckle were very much in evidence, despite the battle that was being waged within his newly slight frame. His funeral took place in Finland, on a bitterly cold day, and in the church I sat next to Pedro de la Rosa, who had grown close to Aki during his time as a McLaren test driver. When Aki’s young widow, his second wife, made a brave and beautiful valedictory speech, one hand on his coffin and the other hugging to her side their two little children, we wept like babies. It was impossible not to.

Aki Hintsa was a wonderful man. Had he not appeared in Häkkinen’s life in 1998, it is fair to say that he might have won no world championships. Instead he won two. Had he not been a steadfast support to Hamilton when he was struggling with tensions with his father on the one hand, disagreements with Dennis on the other, and the overbearing omnipresence of Max Mosley’s menacing FIA, it is fair to say that he might even have quit F1 in some of his gloomier moments in the latter part of his McLaren career. Instead, he has now won seven world championships, or eight, depending on your point of view. But Aki helped all of us McLarenites. Often I would ask him for advice. Always his counsel would be wise. Sometimes it would be brilliant. He was fantastic with our mechanics and engineers, too.

In 2015 the Finnish journalist Oskari Saari wrote an excellent Hintsa biography. Fittingly, he called it The Core. Describing Aki’s resolution to leave McLaren at the end of 2013, which followed a disagreement with then team principal Martin Whitmarsh, Saari wrote: “The decision was made more difficult by the deep friendships he had made over the years. Among the McLaren staff especially Sam Michael, Mike Negline and Matt Bishop were like brothers to him. And then there was Ron Dennis, always Ron Dennis.” Happily, Hintsa and Whitmarsh made their peace soon after their row, but, despite entreaties from Dennis that he reconsider his decision to leave, he would not do so.

Message from Aki Hintsa to Matt Bishop in his book The CoreAki, Sam, Mike and I called ourselves ‘the four musketeers’. On a shelf in my study at home sits a copy of The Core. It was given to me by Aki. He inscribed it as follows: “16/12/2015. Geneva. Dear Matt, I am so proud to be one of the musketeers. Thank you for your friendship. A.”

Eleven months later he was dead. I miss him every day. RIP Aki Hintsa: the archetypal unsung F1 hero.

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