Coulthard: Villeneuve Deserves to Stay

BAR would be better off keeping Jenson Button and Jacques Villeneuve together as Formula One teammates next season, according to David Coulthard.

The Scot is friends of both and, speaking to reporters before Sunday's German Grand Prix, revealed his role in helping Canadian Villeneuve patch up an early season feud with his British teammate.

"I think in any situation it's better the devil you know than the devil you don't," said the McLaren driver.

"There's not going to be someone significantly quicker than Jacques even if he did go...and Jenson obviously feels comfortable with working with him now and I don't think he's blown Jacques' doors off."

Villeneuve's BAR contract runs out at the end of the year with considerable uncertainty surrounding his future and the possibility that the 1997 champion may not secure a drive anywhere else.

"It's difficult to know," Coulthard said when asked whether he thought Villeneuve would be around next year. "One thing that would appear to be true is that he's not going to have the same salary bracket that he has now. But I still think he's a fast racing driver."

The Canadian started the season barely on speaking terms with Button after the Briton joined BAR from Renault. The feud continued until after the first European races and Coulthard felt he had played a part in the peacemaking.

The Scot was literally the man in the middle - his motorhome parked alongside theirs from the start of the European season.

"I couldn't talk to one and not the other," he said. "I'm just not interested in one complaining about the other. So I just made it quite clear to both of them from the start...it probably helped in some way."

Coulthard said the thaw could be detected from the strategic positioning of the luxury vehicles.

"Sometimes I am in the middle but more recently they have been parked beside each other," said Coulthard. "When they started off, if they were beside each other then the doors were always opening on different sides so they weren't bumping into each other in the morning."