The flying Finn
Meeting one of the world's top rally drivers
The old man beside me looked up at a dark sky from which rain was not so much falling as gushing. “I think Scotland is about to sink,” he said glumly. Oddly enough, the part of Scotland we were standing in would do almost exactly that within twenty-four hours.
He was the only person I’ve ever met who has been mentioned in a song by the band Half Man Half Biscuit. Perhaps you’re already aware of Architecture, Morality, Ted and Alice, but if you’re not, the second and third lines go like this:
The wonderful dexterity of Hannu Mikkola
Makes me want to shake hands with the whole of Finland.
To anyone who followed the sport of rallying in the later part of the last century, this might also seem like faint praise. Mikkola was one of the greatest drivers of his era, with a reputation extending far beyond the World Championship title he achieved in 1983. He could take Audi Quattros, Ford Escorts and pretty much any other type of car to the absolute limit on roads around the world, whether they were made of gravel or tarmac, dry, wet or covered with snow and ice.
Mikkola on his way to winning the 1970 London to Mexico World Cup Rally.
Photo copyright Ford.
When he made his gloomy but accurate prediction, one of those roads was only a few paces away. It’s about forty miles north-west of Glasgow, in a dramatically beautiful place whose correct name is Glen Croe but which is usually referred to as the Rest and Be Thankful after one of the hills which looms above it.
The Old Military Road used to be the main highway through these parts, though it was bypassed many years ago by the current A83. Motorsport events took place here as early as 1906, and from just after the Second World War until 1970 it was a famous and demanding hillclimb course. After that, it was deemed too dangerous for hillclimbing, but not for rallying, and it was used as what’s known in that sport as a special stage, a part of a rally in which competitors actually compete, and speeds are not severely restricted as they are on the public-road sections.
Mikkola drove on the Rest many times, including on the 1978 Burmah International. He won that event, but only after a tie-break promoted him above Russell Brookes, who had set exactly the same overall time. No other rally of such high status has had its result determined in this way.
We were there for different reasons. Audi had included a visit to the Rest in the UK press launch of its third-generation TT, and Mikkola was acting as an ambassador for the brand. I was one of many journalists invited along to drive the car – so many, in fact, that the event went through the same cycle on three consecutive days, with a different batch of media representatives present on each of them.
Mikkola competing on the 1981 Sanremo Rally.
Photo copyright Audi.
This was day one, which turned out to be fortunate for me. The heavy rain caused a landslide (a sadly and increasingly familiar problem at the Rest in recent years), making use of the road impossible and forcing Audi to make other arrangements for days two and three.
Those of us in the first batch were therefore the only ones given the opportunity to accompany Mikkola as he blasted up the hill in one of the TTs. I can’t say I was looking forward to this. I’m very fond of competition driving myself, but less fond of someone else doing it when I’m sitting beside them.
We were in a standard car with no reassuring rollcage, not wearing crash helmets or fireproof overalls, careering up a wet road with a steep drop on the left and a generous supply of solid objects to hit on the right. Mikkola appeared to notice none of this, hurtling along the straights and braking violently for the corners several yards later than I would have chosen to.
It was all rather unsettling, but I never felt there was a risk that Mikkola would bring the TT to an abrupt halt against a cliff face, or leave it lying in a smoking heap many feet below, even though we were going extremely quickly. His dexterity was indeed, as reported in the song, wonderful.
Mikkola in 2014, the year I met him.
Photo copyright Michelin Live UK, https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/legalcode.en
He came down the A83 far more sedately before turning back into the glen. Drivers of cars coming the other way stared, no doubt saying to themselves, “Wow, that’s the new Audi TT!” when they should really have been more impressed by who was driving it.
We chatted for a bit. He seemed to like the TT more than I did (okay, I thought, but not really special), and I’m sure he was being sincere, but I couldn’t help remembering that Audi was paying him to be there. He reminisced about the old days, still talking with restrained amusement of having beaten rivals such as Walter Röhrl and Jim McRae decades after he did so.
We shook hands before parting, leaving me about five and a half million Finns short of Half Man Half Biscuit’s target. I would be back home a long time before he was. The next item on his itinerary was to visit his son in Toronto, after which he would spend six months in Florida, as he did every year at this stage of his life. He still loved Finland, he said, but hated the cold.
I had always admired him, but now I liked him too. It would have been nice to meet up with him again and listen to more of his stories, but that never happened. He died in February 2021, more than six years after an encounter which I’m sure he forgot about almost immediately, but which I will always remember.
Top image copyright Audi.
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