Lewis Hamilton responded warmly and sincerely to the news from Heikki Kovalainen, his former teammate at McLaren. The Finnish racer recently underwent a very difficult open heart operation, but the recovery period has now begun.
‘Get better soon, Heikki! I pray for you,” the seven-time world champion wrote on Kovalainen’s social media page, in response to a story about a heart operation successfully performed in Finland last week at Tampere University Hospital.
In the fall of 2023, Heikki’s aortic enlargement was discovered during a routine examination, but now the riskiest part of the health recovery program is over.
“I had a great team of doctors and nurses, and since it was open heart surgery, the scars will last a lifetime,” Kovalainen said. “But the operation was successful, everything we had planned was done: part of the aorta was removed and replaced with a prosthesis. Of course, this is a very serious operation, and a few days after that I felt unwell, but now I am much better and have already returned home, where I will recover.
The prognosis is quite good, there is a chance of full recovery, but of course only over time it will become clear how everything will progress. But so far everything is not bad, and this makes me very happy. For now, I will continue to gradually get back into shape and I hope that I will be able to gradually increase my physical activity…”
Last autumn, Kovalainen defended the Japanese rally champion title in the JN-1 class, also took part in the Finnish championship, and he had very extensive plans for 2024, which now had to be postponed for a long time.
Source: F1 News
I am Christopher Clyde, an experienced journalist and content writer with a passion for sports. I have been writing about Formula 1 news for the past five years and am currently employed as an author at athletistic.com, one of the top sports websites in the US.
