Mika Salo has described a nasty injury scare in Bangkok after suffering a deep gash to his leg that a doctor believed was consistent with a knife slash.
The former Ferrari stand-in — and a familiar face to F1 fans from the late-1990s and early-2000s — was in Thailand when the incident happened. Salo is a regular visitor to the country, which is pushing to secure a spot on the Formula 1 calendar in the coming years, and he admitted the sheer volume of mopeds in the capital can make simply walking down the street feel like a contact sport.
“There are an insane number of mopeds here; they just keep zooming by,” Salo told Finnish outlet *Ilta-Sanomat*. “One came really close, and I felt it brush against me a little. But it didn’t even hurt.”
What followed is the unsettling part. Salo said he carried on walking as normal, only for a passer-by to spot what he hadn’t yet felt.
“I kept walking as usual, and then about five to 10 metres away, a man behind me said: ‘Hey, you’re bleeding a lot from your leg,’” he said. “I looked down and saw that my shoe was completely covered in blood.”
A taxi driver nearby took him to hospital, where the seriousness of the wound quickly became clear. Salo said the doctor examined it and suggested it had been made by something “really sharp”, suspecting a knife — not a definitive conclusion, but one drawn from how clean and straight the cut appeared.
That detail, plus what Salo was told on a follow-up visit, will make uncomfortable reading for anyone who’s spent time navigating busy streets on foot. When he returned the next day for cleaning and further treatment, he was informed there had been “countless similar lacerations” across the same evening and night.
The injury itself was severe enough to require 28 stitches. Salo said the muscle had been torn, meaning doctors had to stitch the muscle before closing the skin.
While the recovery is going well, it hasn’t been a simple “get patched up and move on” scenario. Salo needed daily hospital visits as the wound healed, and he pointed to the heightened risk of infection in Thailand’s humid conditions and poorer air quality — a practical concern rather than melodrama, but one that explains why medical oversight remained constant.
Thankfully, Salo says the injury has now “healed up nicely”.
Now 59, Salo remains one of those drivers whose F1 story is better remembered than his headline stats suggest. He made 109 grand prix starts and drove for Lotus, Tyrrell, Arrows and BAR before his brief but high-profile Ferrari stint in 1999, drafted in when Michael Schumacher was injured. Salo delivered two podiums in that spell — at the German and Italian Grands Prix — before later racing for Sauber and Toyota and leaving F1 at the end of 2002.
This Bangkok episode, though, is a sobering reminder that even long after the chequered flag falls on a career, the risks don’t always come with a helmet and a HANS device.
