Heikki Kovalainen has been tipped to improve progressively as the season unfolds, with
McLaren confident the young Finn will stand atop the
Formula One rostrum before 2008 is out.
Amazingly, it is still just 14 weeks since Kovalainen was unveiled as a McLaren-Mercedes driver for the current campaign, replacing former double world champion
Fernando Alonso, who departed Woking last November after his fractious relationship with both team-mate
Lewis Hamilton and team principal Ron Dennis became untenable.
Despite the steep learning curve he inevitably faces with a front-running team in what is only his second year in the top flight, Martin Whitmarsh said the British outfit's new charge had settled in exceptionally well.
“He came into this team with all the pressure that involves,” the McLaren CEO told
Motorsport Magazin adrivo.com. “To hold your own alongside someone like Lewis who is so strong and so familiar with the way we work, that's excellent.
“His self-confidence has grown enormously. His performance has got stronger and we are just at the beginning of a long relationship.
“I'm sure he will win a race sometime this year, and that will be a further boost to his performance and his self-confidence. I'm convinced he will go from strength-to-strength.”
The 26-year old went on to justify that praise with a strong run to third place in the Malaysian Grand Prix – his second rostrum finish in the uppermost echelon – on a weekend when the Silver Arrows struggled to replicate the form they had displayed Down Under. Even more impressively still, he out-qualified 2007 vice-champion Hamilton along the way on only his second outing for McLaren – and all this from a man who, post-Melbourne, had warned: “I'm sure, over the year, I'll get stronger and stronger, and the other guys need to look out.”
“We have to be pleased with the result,” Kovalainen said of his Sepang performance. “Obviously, after Saturday's penalty, it was going to be a hard day for us, [but] my strategy worked out very well and I was able to be in clean air almost all the time.
