LEWIS HAMILTON'S new team-mate, Heikki Kovalainen, could barely reach the pedals when he first drove a car in the fields and lanes around his house in the Finnish countryside.
Kovalainen would spend hours thrashing around on farm roads, "not legally, but quietly in the middle of the night when there were no police around", learning the skills he now puts into practice on race tracks around the world.
Former Ferrari driver Mika Salo and one-time Benetton man JJ Lehto - both brought up near Helsinki, 400 miles from Kovalainen's home - had similar boyhood experiences.
This is part of the secret of why Finland, a country of just 5.3 million people and 77 billion trees, has produced more Formula One world champions per capita than anywhere else.
Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen, who beat Hamilton to the title last year, is the third champion from a country a quarter of whose land area is inside the Arctic Circle. Raikkonen followed Mika Hakkinen - champion in 1998 and 1999 - and the trailblazer Keke Rosberg, winner in 1982. That is the same number of champions as Brazil, which has a population 40 times bigger.
According to Kovalainen, Lehto and Salo, driving as fast as possible is a common Finnish rite of passage. "I bought cars worth maybe £50 with two or three friends and then drove around on the back roads," Salo says. "They weren't closed roads, but dead ends. Friends used to stop people coming the other way. I was probably 13. I only needed to go 2km from my house to find dirt roads where we could thrash the cars. You get really brave."
This would generally be on gravel roads, where cars slide more easily than on asphalt. But in Finland even the asphalt roads are covered in snow for much of the winter. And snow-mobiling - where the legendary Canadian Ferrari driver Gilles Villeneuve developed his skills - is a popular pastime. The ability to control a motorised vehicle on the very edge of adhesion is a skill Finns develop early.
Go-kart racing is a popular sport and there is a reasonably well-developed motor sport infrastructure.
Nevertheless, Finland's small size and isolation have traditionally meant that aspiring racing drivers find it difficult to raise the huge sums of money required to pursue a career.
Despite the success of their countrymen, many Finns still do not view motor racing as a sport - a fact reflected last year when Raikkonen, the first Finn to win the drivers' title for eight years, was only third in a vote to establish the country's most popular sportsman, behind a javelin thrower and a cross-country skier who had previously been banned for taking performance-enhancing drugs.
According to Salo, Finnish mentality is also an advantage for racing. "We are very stubborn, jealous and selfish people. So you'd rather do well yourself than let somebody else do well."
That characteristic goes hand-in-hand with another quality the teams prize most highly in their Finnish drivers - implacability and coolness. Raikkonen is known as the "ice man" for his extreme calm under pressure, a quality Hakkinen shared.
After a quarter of a century of Finnish success, the conveyor belt has developed its own momentum. "There isn't a day goes by," says Lehto, "when motor sport is not in the news in Finland. Having had three world champions, everyone thinks they can do it."
They cannot, of course. But there are, Salo says, "a few good ones coming through", who have the talent to make it all the way to the top. The Finnish success story in Formula One, it seems, will just run and run.
Flying Finns
Keke Rosberg
Champion: 1982; GPs: 114; wins: 5; poles: 5.
Mika Hakkinen
Champion: 1998, 1999; GPs: 161; wins: 20; poles: 26.
Kimi Raikkonen
Champion: 2007; GPs: 121; wins: 15; poles: 14. Reigning champion.
Heikki Kovalainen
GPs: 17. Stepped up to McLaren this year. Consistently in the points.