Heikki Kovalainen shows courage under fire in Singapore

With smoke billowing from his engine and flames licking the back of his Lotus, Heikki Kovalainen could have been forgiven for ditching his car and running for cover at the Singapore Grand Prix on Sunday.  

Instead, the ice-cool Finn, his Lotus stranded metres from the finish line on the final lap, jumped from the cockpit and tackled the blaze himself while cars roared past to the chequered flag.  

"It always looks dramatic when it's like that," said Kovalainen after asking Williams mechanics to pass him a fire extinguisher through the wire fence. 

"I saw the car caught fire just before the pit entry and I thought, 'I don't want to go to the pit lane with this kind of fire. If it explodes there will be a lot of people hurt."    

The crowd were already on their feet to celebrate Fernando Alonso's victory for Ferrari, but Kovalainen's predicament quickly captured their attention.

The Finn stopped the car along the main straight and looked for a fire marshal for help.

"I could not find any of them so then I just stopped in front of Williams and said: 'Boys please, give me some extinguisher because now it's a bit of a problem''. Luckily I got it stopped reasonably quickly."                                           

Red Bull principal Christian Horner got a bird's eye view of the flaming Lotus as it passed directly in front of his engineering control centre.                                           

"That was a bit cheeky, he could at least have gone down to McLaren or Ferrari," he joked. "It was pretty smelly out there with all that foam as well but thankfully nobody got hurt."