What you really need to win the world championship and how Mika's got just that…

I'm feeling quite pleased with myself as I write this column because I said all along that my old mate Mika Hakkinen was going to win the world championship. One of the reasons I was so convinced he'd win, over and above his basic ability, is that he always had the right emotional support from McLaren. If you're going to get results in F1, that is vital. Michael Schumacher is the only guy right now who can do without such support.

Looking back, I reckon that Alan Jones must have been a real tough guy. Jonesey didn't need emotional support because he was a tough character - that's possibly where this whole image thing that Williams have began. I'm not saying it as criticism, I think Frank and Patrick Head would be the first to admit it, but Williams are a team that have little time for wet-nursing their drivers. They're into the engineering and it's up to the driver to look after himself. Patrick is a very strong character and because he and Jonesey were so similar, they respected each other and gelled.

Heinz-Harald Frentzen is a quick driver, but when he went to Williams from Sauber he did not get the emotional support he was used to. As a result I don't think we ever saw him at his best. I'm going to be fascinated to see how Heinz-Harald develops at Jordan.

Today's Jonesey equivalent is Michael Schumacher. I believe he works the same way Senna did - Schumacher's invincible in his own mind. With Ayrton, that conviction came in a religious way- he felt God protected him. The end result is the same though: you feel you can't be beaten.

That's the way I used to be in F3000. It had all gone well for me in F3 and I was on a roll. My profile went up and up and I seemed to have all the F1 teams after me. When I went to Brands Hatch for that fateful race [in 1988], Frank Williams was there. I don't know what he had in mind, but I knew he wanted to speak to me. It was all very different after the accident. I've been criticised at times for being too cheerful and not appearing to take things seriously but that's a mask I adopted. It took so long to get myself right again, that image sort of stuck. It was my personality.

Before the accident I wasn't the bubbly sort of guy. Inside, I knew I was the best. I knew I could beat anybody, on any day, in any car. I really believed that and I'd go out on the track and do it.

For a short while Jean Alesi had that same conviction, then it became Michael and he's kept that air of invincibility ever since. He's The Man, and when you are, you have this confidence that allows aggro to pass right over your head.

It's when you aren't The Man any more that things get tough. We all think we're the best- we wouldn't be F1 drivers if we didn't - but there are a lot of us who need to have that feeling from a team of being really wanted. I admit it: what happened with Jean at Silverstone and the Al-Ring this year took me a long time to get my head around. I desperately needed an arm-round-shoulder fillip to help get back quicker than I managed. Dragging myself back up was hard. Again, that's not criticism of the team, but it illustrates that the emotional mix is a big part of Formula 1.

And that's why Mika won the world championship. As well as doing a damn good job in the cockpit, he also had that well of emotional sup-port from Ron and the rest of the McLaren team.

There are many factors that lie behind success, but emotional support is the most important factor- the one that lets you make best use of the equipment you are given.

These GP Columns appeared exclusively in F1 Racing magazine every month.
The columns are reproduced by kind permission of the Editor, Matt Bishop.
With thanks to F1 Racing ©. All rights reserved.
This page prepared 30th November 1998.