Cup final, where they lost to the German team of Michael Schumacher and Sebastian Vettel. Kovalainen beat Vettel in the individual race, before crashing on the finish line in the next round against Andy Priaulx. He crossed the line out of control, and Priaulx pipped him. Kovalainen returned to the event in 2010, where he withdrew after suffering a concussion in a crash after a heat race against Sébastien Loeb. Super GT In 2015, Kovalainen moved to Japan to compete in Super GT (GT500 class) with Lexus. In his first season of Super GT, he drove the Lexus RC F GT500 for SARD with Kohei Hirate. The following year Kovalainen and Hirate won the Super GT championship: after going into the season's closing double header at Twin Ring Motegi in fourth place in the standings, they qualified on pole and led most of the first of the two races before dropping down to second, subsequently taking their only win of the season in the final round to clinch the title. The championship win was Kovalainen's first since winning the Nissan World Series in 2004. After the end of the 2021 season, Kovalainen announced that he would retire from the series. Rallying Like many of his compatriots, Kovalainen developed an interest in rallying, with him stating it was a "childhood dream". An initial attempt at rallying was made in 2009 to contest the Arctic Rally after being released from his "restrictive" contract with McLaren in Formula One, with Kovalainen reportedly set to drive a Proton Satria Neo S2000 rally car in the 2010 Arctic Rally; this plan ultimately never came to be as Kovalainen "did not have time to seriously prepare for the rally". He would make his actual rallying debut at the same rally five years later in 2015, finishing third in his class. Kovalainen's first foray into rallying in Japan came in 2016, entering four events of the Japan Rally Championship with co-driver Sae Kitagawa in a Toyota GT86 CS-R3 campaigned by SARD. Kovalainen retired in Hokkaido but finished second in his class at the Shinshiro Rally. Kovalainen would return to the series in 2018 with the same car and co-driver but now competing for Rally Team AICELLO on a part-time schedule, as well as the Japan Super Rally Series in 2019, also with the same car and co-driver. Kovalainen was supposed to compete in the Japan Rally Championship