Press Release

An Interview with Sir_ErikSalama…

27.06.2023 - I’m pretty sure most people know who Sir_ErikSalama is. He has a lot of friends here. If you don’t, then I strongly advise you to friend request him as he is a brilliant person to have on your friend list. Recently, I interviewed him, and here it is…

Interviewer - Hello and welcome to the first episode of our brand new series, where we interview different managers about their journey in MRC. The first manager is Sir_ErikSalama, manager of Mercedes AMG-Petronas F1 Team and a very good one too. Erik, it’s great to have you here with us today. Let’s begin with your journey to MRC. How did you get involved in motorsports? You’ve fared very well, but what got you started?

Sir_ErikSalama (referred to as Erik) - I started watching F1 since I was 4 years old with my dad and we watched every race weekend where Häkkinen fought against Schumacher and ever since then I fell in love with motorsports and especially F1. In my early teens I started playing F1 games on a console then when I was 19 and in the army (As Finland has mandatory military service in place) I saw someone playing this game on a mobile so decided to kill some time and make account here in 2016 and I’ve been here ever since.

Interviewer - That’s an incredible story. And you also mentioned Mika Häkkinen. I’m assuming he was one of your favourite drivers. Has he inspired you in any way with his racecraft and never-give-up attitude?

Erik - Every Finnish driver has the same mentality as Mika. Push everything from the car and drive it as fast as you can.

Interviewer - If you had to choose a real F1 driver that you are most similar to, who would it be?

Erik - Well if I had to say it would have to be Nico Rosberg, as I feel that my approach in this game is the same as he had in his F1 career where I analyse every result and give out long interviews as he used to do.

Interviewer - Let’s talk about your driver’s career. In his career, I expect that there have been highs and lows. Can you give us some lows to start with and how you bounced back to become even stronger?

Erik - Fortunately Lehto’s career has been very blessed from the beginning. There were 2 seasons (S40, S41) where i didn’t log in to the game for 6 months due to a busy schedule and it looked like that Lehto’s chance to ever drive in a good F1 team was over, but he, fortunately, was able to correct his mistakes from season 42 onwards and he was able to achieve the maximum that there is to achieve with a driver who lost 6 months of development time. So the lows were Lehto’s 2 seasons in Superb Formula cars.

And there were quite a few highs like Championships from V8, World TCS series and I was able to get a drive in F1’s 3rd fastest team, Toyota, in season 51.

But my biggest accomplishment with Lehto has to be last season’s Silverstone win in F1 as I never expected to become a race-winning driver in F1 with Lehto and Lehto became first Finnish driver since Season 45 to win a Grand Prix in Formula 1.

Interviewer - Yeah, I actually watched that Grand Prix and I was really happy with you for the win. You don’t know this but my favourite driver was Kimi Raikkonen before he retired so to have a Finnish driver win was pretty good, reminded me of Kimi. Your F1 career has spanned three seasons so far, with BMW, Toyota (basically BMW) and now Chevy. What big team do you want to move onto and when do you think that might happen?

Erik - Lehto has few options still remaining for Season 53, but talks are still in process with 1 team that has the budget and facilities to have a strong car in Season 53, but for Lehto, a chance to drive again in a team that can fight for World Championship is looking a bit slim.

That’s why my 2nd driver Rosberg is the next potential World Champion in F1 if he plays his cards right with negotiations and proves that he belongs to the top.

Interviewer - You never know when it’s F1. With Wozipiwo struggling as he is you may have a chance but obviously you know more about the inside stories. I’ve also watched Rosberg a few times and he is indeed incredibly talented. I watched the whole of last season, in fact. I remember that you qualified on pole in Bahrain, which surprised me seeing BMW’s form in Season 50. I genuinely thought Toyota to be a title challenger but you had a rough start to the Season. From pole to P7 must’ve been so, so painful and a loss of form followed whilst your teammate did well with podiums. How important was that P3 in Spain and the win in Silverstone? Did it affect you greatly in the second half of the season?

Erik - Well Red Bull have their own Academy Programme going on. Red Bull managers are good friends of myself & Eurobilltracker but i can say that you won’t see Lehto in Red Bull next season. I was still bit g-teen in F1 last season and Lehto in the first 4 races didn’t show any kind of results while Toyota were still 2nd fastest before Monaco as that was when Toyota’s pace dropped behind Ferrari due to better upgrades from them. Lehto started to drive better when i got to know that Lehto wouldn’t be in Toyota next season and that was actually before Silverstone. I got, before Spain, help from Eurobilltracker who drove in Red Bull and he helped me with the risks from Spain onwards. But I was still happy that Lehto had such a strong ending in the 2nd half of the season. his drives from Suzuka to Abu Dhabi showed that if he performed like that in the beginning he would have probably been kept in Toyota for one more season. Over-ambition was the reason why first half of the season was so difficult. The Spain podium opened the ketchup bottle as it allowed me to see the bigger picture and realise it’s not how you perform in one race but how consistent you can be in 22 other races.

Interviewer - Eurobilltracker. I am certainly not as familiar with him as you are (with the only things I know about him is that his driver Linus Torvalds used to drive for Williams and he is my friend), but tell me about him. And also would it be possible to go into full details of the Williams-Mercedes takeover?

Erik - Eurobilltracker is a very close friend of mine in this game and he was the reason why I got such an amazing opportunity to get involved in F1 on this game. Eurobilltracker was, for a very long time, the assistant of the previous owner of Williams (Petu92) but in Season 44, Petu’s real life schedule didn’t leave him enough time anymore to run the team, he asked Tracker if he wanted to take over the team. Then Tracker asked me to become an assistant of old Williams team. Finally, after last season I switched roles with Tracker and I asked him if he was ok with the brand change from Williams to Mercedes, and when he gave me his blessing, I turned Williams into Mercedes and we still run the new Mercedes team same way we did with Williams.

Tracker in my opinion is the best Finnish Manager of all time in this game. When he was in Red Bull he was able to fight for World Championships in S44 and 45 with the 3rd fastest car and would have won the title in S45 but unfortunate DNF´s cost him that.

Interviewer - How did Toyota’s decision to terminate your contract even before Silverstone affect you? It must have been tough, and we’ve seen real-life drivers like Gasly and Albon struggle after getting kicked out of Red Bull, though both have found form. And which driver on the current grid do you like, respect or enjoy racing against the most?

Erik - I already had a strong feeling after not capitalising on a 3rd pole position in Miami that it was going to be Lehto’s last season in Toyota, so when the announcement came it didn’t affect my mindset and I just wanted to have a strong end to the season and help Toyota get a Top 4 Constructors position so we could go on our own different paths with a job well done. Toyota’s aim was to get Top 4 in Constructors title and both drivers to top 8 in Driver´s Championship and we did that. In the end we kept a good relationship due to a strong ending to the season with Toyota. Biggest respect has to go to JordanF1 and his driver (de Saint-Germain) and I enjoyed fighting against him for wins. Especially in Brazil, USA and Suzuka. My old teammate Montoya from Toyota (Dimitri) was one driver who I enjoyed fighting as well because we helped each other in every aspect last season and if one had an off day we would make sure to help one another so we could perform better next time.

Interviewer - Thank you so, so much for doing this interview.

Erik - Thank you.

If you would like to do an interview like this with me, just pop me a message and we can arrange one. Have a good day :)