Two-time F1 champion kicks off world’s longest sabbatical - On This Day

Mika Hakkinen walked away from F1 after the 2001 Japanese Grand Prix and never came back, yet twenty-five years on, the Finn has still never formally announced his retirement.

What began as a one-year sabbatical from McLaren, with Kimi Raikkonen drafted in as his replacement for 2002, simply became permanent. No press conference, no farewell tour. Hakkinen just didn't return.

The 2001 finale at Suzuka was won by Michael Schumacher, his ninth victory of a season he had wrapped up with races to spare.

Juan Pablo Montoya finished second for Williams. Third place belonged to David Coulthard, but only because his McLaren team-mate handed it to him five laps from the end.

Hakkinen, running fourth, moved aside on the main straight to let Coulthard through, a gesture with history behind it.

"I'm happy that David finished on the podium. I must admit that by letting him past I wanted to give him something back for the occasions in the past when he has helped me," Hakkinen said, recalling favours at Jerez in 1997 and Melbourne in 1998 when Coulthard had done the same for him.

Coulthard, for his part, kept his reaction brief in the FIA press conference. "It's nice to finish the season, as Michael said, on the podium," he said.

A title fight that wore him down

By the time Hakkinen climbed out of his McLaren that day, the decision to step away had already been made. It traced back to the opening race of the season in Melbourne, where a high-speed suspension failure sent him into the barriers and dragged up memories of the near-fatal crash he suffered at Adelaide in 1995.

"When they were doing that, it all suddenly reminded me of my Adelaide accident. I was in the same country, and again a technical problem had caused me to crash," Hakkinen said at the time.

"When something like that happens to you again, you start to think in a very negative way. [...] I sat down and thought to myself, 'You've won two championships; one should never be too greedy'."

The birth of his son Hugo in December 2000 had already begun shifting his priorities away from the single-minded obsession that two world titles, in 1998 and 1999, had demanded.

Hakkinen approached Ron Dennis at Monaco in May 2001 intending to retire outright, only for the McLaren boss to talk him into calling it a sabbatical instead, keeping the door open for a return in 2003.

"At the Monaco Grand Prix in 2001 I informed Ron that I wanted to stop, but he wanted to make sure that I made the right decision and gave me the opportunity to take a sabbatical," Hakkinen said. "Once I had spoken with Ron a huge weight came off my shoulders."

The Finn who never came back

McLaren turned to Raikkonen, then just 21 and with barely a season of car racing experience at Sauber behind him. Dennis backed the gamble on raw speed over CV, and Hakkinen himself endorsed the choice, pointing to the composure the young Finn had already shown.

The sabbatical was never reversed. Reportedly, during his year away, Hakkinen realised he felt relief rather than restlessness, and that the motivation to return simply never came back.

A flirtation with a comeback resurfaced in late 2006, when he tested for McLaren and held talks with Williams, but a Barcelona test that November exposed how much the demands of testing and reliability had moved on, and the idea was shelved for good.

Schumacher, the man who denied him further titles, later named Hakkinen as the rival he respected above all others. "The most respected guy in all those years was Mika Hakkinen. Great fights but a stable private relationship," he said.

Hakkinen has never stood in front of a camera and said the word retirement. He simply stopped turning up, and Formula 1 moved on without him.