Regarding pretty much every Finnish F1 driver and a few others:
As a driver, Leo Kinnunen was very much respected in the paddock - but in contrast, his career management was extremely rejectful. Kinnunen was reluctant to learn any English (even replying to his Porsche sportscar team boss John Wyer who had encouraged Kinnunen to study some English, that "if Wyer had anything important to say, he should learn some Finnish...) which was a part of the reason why he wasn't retained for 1971, and which, certainly, significantly hindered his career. Interestingly, a certain mr Ecclestone was also very keen on Kinnunen, but to little avail. Bernie had been impressed by mr Kinnunen early on his junior formula career, and had negotiated him a deal to race for the Lotus works F2 team in 1969 (and he did it free of charge - imagine that of Bernie!) with a deal that Ecclestone considered a bargain for the driver - which Kinnunen subsequently declined because he didn't want to pay for the seat but wanted to get paid instead. Bernie didn't give up though, and a year later the man offered Kinnunen his management services again - which Kinnunen declined, because he didn't understand why any foreigner should manage him. After a couple of years winning in Interserie, Kinnunen finally thought he was ready to join F1 at the end of 1973 - at which point, his Finnish management naturally contacted Tyrrell enquiring for a spare car for the AAW team (which, shockingly enough for the WCC team, they didn't have), then McLaren (same story), then Bernie - who was still prepared to offer Kinnunen a 2 year contract in Brabham's works team, which Leo declined because he only wanted a 1 year contract and wasn't keen on the idea of working with British people...and so on, and so on, until John Surtees finally agreed to sell the amateurish Finns that rubbish car - an operation so amateurish that it basically ended Kinnunen's career.
- Mikko Kozarowitzky had some half-baked deals with Frank Williams but lacked the funding; then was involved in the 1978 Tiga project, which went bust.
- Kojima had planned to enter F1 for 1978 full time with Keke Rosberg as a driver, but that plan went bust when Kunimitsu Takahashi totaled the chassis in testing. Still, on short contracts at Theodore, ATS, Newman/Haas (Can-Am) and Wolf, Rosberg was able to impress enough to finally secure a 3 year contract at Fittipaldi - which turned out to be an unlucky break for him because the contract tied him with the team for 1981, even despite the Fittipaldi team losing much of the backing they had had, and McLaren's keen interest in Keke's services. Only in late 1981 Rosberg was able to break the contract for unpaid salaries and looked to be out of contract for 1982 - until Alan Jones announced his retirement from Williams, which turned out to be a very lucky break for Keke since he was able to secure a single test session with the team. Patrick Head was impressed with Keke - however, Frank still tried to lure back several other candidates, namely Mario Andretti, John Watson and Alan Jones, before having to settle with "only" Keke for 1982... Well, we all remember how that decision turned out for them, and Keke was still a hot commodity in late 1985 when he was leaving them. Enzo Ferrari wanted to sign him for both 1986 and 1987, but Keke had already decided he'd almost had enough of F1 and contacted McLaren for a final 1 year contract instead. The book also goes to great lengths describing Rosberg's...difficult relationship with the Finnish press at the time, but neglects mention the 1991 shenanigans with the rumoured contract Eddie Jordan offered Keke for Spa...
- Henri Toivonen was a talented driver in open wheelers in the seventies (as well as WRC, obviously) and would have went on with that trajectory if not for his father Pauli (also a prosperous rally driver) who thought rallying was much safer.
- Jari Nurminen (a F3000 driver from the mid 80's) had a couple of Arrows tests for 1987 with strong support from his personal sponsor Barclay who also backed Arrows. Despite being a second slower than Danner in the test, the parties had already signed a F1 race contract for the year - but failed to get a superlicence from the FIA after the Finnish motorsport organization lobbied against it, because they thought a small nation would not support more than one driver at once, and JJ Lehto was their favoured boy. Nurminen tried again in 1988 signing a pre-contract with Coloni, but was none the luckier with the motorsport organization still firmly thinking Nurminen was not good enough.
- Peculiarly those Finnish funding packages "reserved" for JJ Lehto eventually landed on fellow Rosberg protegé Mika Häkkinen. Therefore JJ ever brought little backing with him, and the small money deals he got with Onyx, Dallara and Sauber were mainly for his talent and were pretty much the best he could hope for - he never really had better offers than those. Late in 1993 Keke (his manager) pulled a "real miracle", having been very proactive with the Benetton deal they were able to secure for 1994 - but it all went to the ruins with the winter testing crash at Stowe where he almost died, which destroyed JJ's spine and made his driving a painful exercise for much over a year.
- On the other hand Rosberg genuinely thought Mika Häkkinen was the real deal and took a big risk early on his career: the Finnish funding package coming from several sponsors still only covered roughly half the money required for the Lotus deal (a few million dollars / year) - so Keke paid half of it himself, which was a large amount of money back then. Obviously it paid off, with Mika showing so much talent that he soon had Williams, McLaren and Ligier on his tails - the story of 1993, with Williams forgetting to register for 1993 and Peter Collins playing hard ball for that, eventually forcing Williams to cancel Mika's contract and Häkkinen to settle with McLaren, is obviously well documented. The details on Häkkinen's post-retirement negotiations on the book conflict with Mika's own words, thought: in a recent interview Häkkinen says that he was in fact negotiating with Williams for the 2006 seat, not the 2005 one as mentioned in the book, and he was not 100% committed to returning at that point. However, both the interview and the book are consistent with the claims that before the November 2006 McLaren test, Häkkinen was genuinely training up, planning a return and Dennis had genuinely offered him a 2007 race seat (presumably Lewis'?) if Mika wanted to - but an ECU problem ruined the test, made Mika's times incomparable and Häkkinen says that at that point, he decided to quit for good because then he remembered again why he had retired in the first place: F1 was essentially "solving a problem after a problem" and he didn't miss that part of it at all.
- Mika Salo's drink driving incident in 1990 directed his career off the rails to Japan, but the knowledge he gained on the Japanese tracks eventually brought him to F1: Jordan already became somewhat interested in his services for Aida in 1994 but he failed to find the money; however just before Suzuka Lotus called Salo at midnight and asked him to pony up 20 000 dollars at a very short notice in exchange for a one reace deal: Mika duly did and the next day brought the money to Lotus in a Mickey Mouse bag in yens... His performance was so impressive that Lotus gave him the Adelaide drive for free, and for the next year Tyrrell snapped him up with a 3 year contract before even beginning the sponsor negotiations with Nokia. Salo had the same fate as Rosberg did, though: Ferrari were interested in signing Salo for 1996, but mr Tyrrell refused to break the contract. Salo also describes in the book how he didn't like Tom Walkinshaw and Peter Sauber, almost lost the opportunity to replace Schumacher because Mika's wedding was scheduled for when Jean Todt thought he was supposed to be hiding from the press at Maranello, that Ferrari wanted to retain him for 2000 so much they tried to break Rubens' fresh contract, and that it was his idea to sign Kimi for Sauber and not Peter Sauber's who first was reluctant to sign it...obviously, all this to be taken with a grain of salt considering it's Salo saying this.
- We know much of Kimi's career trajectory - the few interesting details on the book were that Rosberg declined to manage Kimi because he thought Kimi was not marketable as he "couldn't speak" his Sauber seat cost 4 million dollars - of which the Robertsons paid a large majority themselves, and that by mid 2012 (apparently...) each of Mercedes, Ferrari, Red Bull and McLaren were interested in signing Kimi - who declined them all to stay with Lotus for 2013.
- Kovalainen had his way to F1 paved by Flavio, who declined Paul Stoddart's test drive 2004 - race drive 2005 offer and promoted him straight to the works team from a testing role; and then got lucky with the McLaren seat opening after effectively getting fired from Renault even before Briatore clinched the deal with Alonso. After the Crashgate Kovalainen thought he could be his own manager - which ended up being a bad decision in 2010, for McLaren were not interested in renewing his contract, 2nd option Toyota pulled out, and he could not come to agreeable terms with Sauber - effectively destining him to Loterham for the rest of his career.
- Nothing special about Bottas, except that his backing for Williams by the Finnish companies Kemppi and Wihuri was estimated around the figure of 6 million dollars every year. Some whispers say they are bringing the same sum to Mercedes.
