The McLaren that gave F1 its 100th grand prix winner

For Heikki Kovalainen, the McLaren MP4-23 will forever be remembered as the car that guided him to his only Formula 1 victory at the 2008 Hungarian Grand Prix. But that isn’t the only reason why it’s his favourite.

Kovalainen’s career has had several chapters. He made 111 starts in F1 before tackling Japan’s Super GT scene and becoming champion in 2016. Now he’s back competing in rallying with a national title in Japan already under his belt.

Not unusually for a Finn, the World Rally Championship was his first love – at least until he found himself distracted by the sight of a red-and-white McLaren being tamed by countryman Mika Hakkinen in 1993.

“The MP4-23 was a championship-winning car [with Lewis Hamilton], and to be part of the McLaren team with Ron Dennis and Martin Whitmarsh there running the team was kind of my childhood dream,” explains Kovalainen, who joined McLaren after a rookie F1 season with Renault in 2007 that had peaked with a fine second in torrential rain at Fuji.

Kovalainen’s 2008 campaign was one of highs and lows. Pole at Silverstone and becoming the 100th world championship race winner at the Hungaroring, after a late engine failure for erstwhile leader Felipe Massa, contrasted with a tyre failure in the Spanish Grand Prix that resulted in a hospital visit.

But, in Kovalainen’s eyes, the MP4-23 is one of the most attractive F1 cars of a period when the cars had sprouted several aerodynamic appendages, thanks to its Silver Arrows livery.

“I think it was one of the best-looking cars as well to date,” he notes. “The current McLaren doesn’t appeal to me like the chrome McLaren, but of course, I am a little bit biased!”

This era of F1 came with the unmistakable scream of V8 engines and the MP4-23 had arguably the best in the field at that point. The Mercedes FO 108V powerplant particularly stood out for the 2005 GP2 runner-up.

“Compared to the Renault engine I drove the year before, it felt so racy,” says Kovalainen, now back behind the wheel after recovering from open-heart surgery. “The Mercedes engine had a lot more vibration so when they started up the car it sounded and felt rougher. When they started it up I was like ‘Wow’! But it had a lot of grunt and just sounded really cool.”

Kovalainen reckons it was the car’s balance…