“My chestbone has healed and heart feels good also”: Lewis Hamilton’s former teammate Heikki Kovalainen shares health news after open heart surgery

Lewis Hamilton's former McLaren teammate Heikki Kovalainen recently provided an update on his health after open heart surgery. The Finn stated that he is feeling much better and has started training.

Kovalainen recently suffered from an ascending aortic aneurysm, which is essentially a bulge in the artery closest to the heart. This condition increases the chances of the artery rupturing and causing severe internal bleeding.

As a result, Kovalainen was unable to participate in the Japanese Rally Championship in 2024 with the AICELLO rally team, being subsequently replaced by Katsuhiko Taguchi.

In early March, Heikki Kovalainen announced that he would undergo an open heart surgery to resolve his condition. In April 2024, the operation was done successfully.

A couple of months after the surgery, the 42-year-old took to X social media to provide an update on his health and life after the surgery. He talked about gradually increasing his training regime but still focusing on recovery while also revealing that his chest bone had been completely healed and his heart felt good.

"A little recovery update following my open heart surgery 10 weeks ago - generally feeling quite good now, been able to increase training intensity bit by bit but still plenty of rest too. My chestbone has healed well and the heart feels good also. Next check up in a couple of weeks," Kovalainen wrote on X.

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Heikki Kovalainen shares how he underwent an open-heart surgery

A few weeks after his surgery, Heikki Kovalainen posted a video on his official X account explaining how he underwent the surgery and gave an update on his initial recovery. In the video, he gave a brief history about how he decided to get an open heart surgery at Tampere University Hospital in Finland. He also thanked the doctors and nurses for helping him through the entire process.

"We decided to go ahead with an operation. And I was actually operated on last week in Tampere University Hospital in the heart hospital unit there. It was a wonderful team of doctors and nurses and assistants that took care of me there. It was an open heart surgery, so I have marks forever now under this shirt on my chest. But the surgery went well," Heikki Kovalainen said.

"Everything went well. It was obviously a big operation; I was feeling a bit rough a couple of days after the operation, but things have improved a lot since then. And I’m actually back at home now already recovering. The outlook is quite good," he added.

The Finnish racing driver once partnered with Lewis Hamilton at McLaren back in the 2008 and 2009 F1 seasons. In the first season of them as teammates, Hamilton managed to win his maiden world championship while Kovalainen finished seventh in the standings. In his F1 career, he has 111 race starts and one race win in the 2008 F1 Hungarian GP.