[3] He finished fourth in the championship with two wins, two pole positions, five podiums and three fastest laps, earning the Rookie of the Year award.

With three pole positions and three fastest laps, Kovalainen finished third overall in the championship behind Robbie Kerr and James Courtney[3] and he was again Rookie of the Year.

Kovalainen moved into the Renault-owned World Series by Nissan in 2003 – but faced a tough teammate at the Gabord team in Franck Montagny.

Kovalainen continued in the series in 2004, but moved to Pons Racing, where he won the championship ahead of Tiago Monteiro, with 192 points and six wins.

[3] With Kimi Räikkönen finishing seventh in Formula One and Marcus Grönholm fifth in the World Rally Championship, Kovalainen received the Finnish Driver of the Year award.

Driving for the Arden International team, Kovalainen began the season with strong results by winning the first round of the championship in Imola and then finishing third in the sprint race.

At this point in the season, however, a resurgent Nico Rosberg with his ART Grand Prix team seemed to find more speed and began scoring victories, emerging as Kovalainen's main rival for the championship.

Kovalainen and Arden fought back, scoring podiums and points positions in Silverstone, Hockenheim and Hungaroring, but were unable to find the necessary speed to beat Rosberg.

In the final two rounds in Bahrain, Rosberg and ART seemed to be unmatched again, and he secured the championship by winning the feature race with Kovalainen finishing third.

[6] Kovalainen scored his first World Championship point in his second Grand Prix at Sepang, Malaysia, and followed this with a ninth place in Bahrain.

He had luck with the strategy and the Safety Car, and a podium was within his grasp, but he could not find a way past Alexander Wurz of Williams, who had also started towards the rear of the pack.

He re-joined behind Räikkönen and looked comfortable in sixth place until Nick Heidfeld's BMW Sauber broke down in front of him, and thus, Kovalainen finished fifth, while teammate Fisichella failed to score points.

During the French Grand Prix at Magny-Cours, he was battling with Fisichella until the sharp Adelaide hairpin, when Jarno Trulli's Toyota made an optimistic lunge up the inside of Kovalainen which wrecked both drivers' races.

While most of his rivals got into trouble one way or another in the hazardous wet conditions, Kovalainen did not and held off Kimi Räikkönen in the closing laps to take second place and his first podium in Formula One.

[19] In Montreal, Kovalainen experienced difficulties with his tyres, as they seemed to degrade much more rapidly than Hamilton's, and the team was forced to tell him to take it easy in order to avoid a puncture.

[21][22] At the French Grand Prix Kovalainen started tenth on the grid, after being docked five places for blocking Mark Webber in qualifying, and finished the race in fourth.

Hamilton turns the car in a shorter time whereas Kovalainen is trying to make the corners more round, inadvertently causing more wear on the tyres.

In the race Kovalainen developed brake temperature problems, however, and could not match Vettel's pace, finishing in second place, but was disappointed at the lost chance for a win.

Prior to the Japanese Grand Prix Kovalainen discussed his driving style and the tyre problems in an interview with the Finnish newspaper Turun Sanomat, feeling they had now solved the issues.

[36][37][38] Going into the Brazilian Grand Prix, Kovalainen qualified fifth on the grid, leading many to believe that the McLarens were fuelled heavier than the other frontrunners, having set the pace earlier in the weekend.

In the Australian Grand Prix, Kovalainen retired due to a collision with Mark Webber in the first corner and in Malaysia he spun off on the first lap while fighting for position with Hamilton and Massa.

On 18 November it was announced that recently crowned world champion Jenson Button had been signed on a multi-year deal as Hamilton's teammate leaving Kovalainen[42] without a 2010 F1 drive.

At Valencia on lap 9 Mark Webber's Red Bull hit Kovalainen's Lotus and went over the top, before landing and skidding into the barrier.

A 17th-place finish at Silverstone and a fourteenth in Hungary sandwiched his fourth retirement of the season in Germany, due to damage caused by a collision with Sauber's Pedro de la Rosa.

He retired yet again at the 2010 Singapore Grand Prix after his car caught fire in the final lap, although his decision to not go into the pit lane and instead stop at the side of the track and tackle the blaze himself was met with applause from the crowd.

He finished 19th in Turkey and crashed out in Spain, having started from 15th on the grid, outqualifying the Force Indias of Paul di Resta and Adrian Sutil.

In August 2020, F1, in partnership with Amazon Web Services and machine learning, ranked Kovalainen as the 8th fastest Formula One driver in qualifying from 1983 to 2020.

He also participated in the Nations Cup alongside countryman Marcus Grönholm, but they finished in second place after Kovalainen's Ferrari 360 Modena broke down in the finals, losing to the French team of Loeb and Alesi.

[3] Kovalainen won the Nations Cup with Grönholm in 2006, but was eliminated in the individual event at the semi-final stage by Mattias Ekström by a mere 0.0002 seconds.

In 2007, Kovalainen and Grönholm again made the Nations Cup final, where they lost to the German team of Michael Schumacher and Sebastian Vettel.