Formula One Career
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! Nationality
| Finnish
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! Active years
| 1994–2000, 2002
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! Team(s)
| Lotus, Tyrrell, Arrows, British American Racing, Ferrari, Sauber, Toyota
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! Grands Prix
| 111
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! Championships
| 0
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! Wins
| 0
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! Podium finishes
| 2
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! Pole positions
| 0
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! Fastest laps
| 0
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! First Grand Prix
| 1994 Japanese Grand Prix
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! First win
| —
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! Last win
| —
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! Last Grand Prix
| 2002 Japanese Grand Prix
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Mika Juhani Salo is a FinnishFormula 1 driver. He was born in Helsinki, November 30, 1966. His best ranking was 10th in the world championship in 1999.
He raced against countryman and fierce rival Mika Häkkinen in the 1990 British F3 championship, finishing 2nd to him. After a few years racing in Japan he made his first Formula 1 starts at the end of 1994, with a full season at Tyrrell the year after. He was to spend 3 years with the team, scoring points several times, most notably by running the whole of the wet 1997 Monaco Grand Prix without a fuelstop (although he pitted to replace his front wing), the only driver to do this since refuelling was reintroduced in 1994. Despite a promising 1998 with Arrows, he had no full-time drive in 1999.
Substitute for Ferrari
Following an injury to BAR driver Ricardo Zonta, Salo did get a short-term drive for 1999, for three races. However, when Michael Schumacher broke his leg at a crash during the 1999 British Grand Prix Salo was selected as his long-term substitute to partner Eddie Irvine at Ferrari. In his second race in Ferrari at the 1999 German Grand Prix Salo lead for much of the race and would have scored a Grand prix win but team orders demanded that he give the lead to Irvine, who at the time was fighting for the championship with Mika Häkkinen. He also finished third at Monza, ahead of Irvine.
Ferrari to Sauber
He was back full-time in 2000 with Sauber, again taking 10th in the championship, although he left the team for 2001 to help the new Toyota team prepare for its entry in 2002. He scored 2 points for them in their first season, becoming only the 2nd driver to score points on a team's debut in the modern era by finishing 6th at the 2002 Australian Grand Prix (the other being fellow Finn, JJ Lehto) for Sauber in 1993. He retired from Formula 1 at the end of this season, after surprisingly getting fired from Toyota. Rumours said that the reason for Salo's release was personal problems with staff working for Toyota, but this has not been confirmed.
During his Formula One career, he achieved 2 podiums, and scored a total of 33 championship points.
After F1
His first post-F1 race came at the 2003 12 Hours of Sebring, driving the UK-entered Audi R8, the same car he was supposed to race at the 24 Hours of Le Mans if it hadn't ran out of fuel already after the first hour. He raced in four CART races for PK Racing during the same year, his best finish being third in Miami in his second series start.
Because of his strong links with Ferrari he was picked up to be part of the development program of the Maserati MC12 GT racer. He made his FIA GT debut in 2004, narrowly losing the 24 Hours of Spa-Francorchamps in a Ferrari 575. After that he entered the last four races of the season in the Maserati, winning two races and finishing twice once.
2005 was a year somewhat lost in the doldrums with only two participations with the Maserati MC12 in the ALMS GTS-class, a competition where the car turned out to be not even half as competitive as in the FIA GT series.
For 2006, Mika is back full-time, having signed with Risi Competizione in the ALMS and with AF Corse in the FIA GT to drive the Ferrari 430.
He currently resides in Monaco with his Japanese wife Noriko (born Endo) and their son, Max and daughter Mai.
Complete Formula One results
(Note: Grands Prix in bold denote points scoring races.)
