Coulthard 'chilled' despite bad Friday

The Scot trails Michael Schumacher by 37 points and the German needs just three more to guarantee his fourth world title.

As if the task were not big enough, he suffered another setback in Hungary when new kerbing ripped off his undertray and made him a spectator to the action for most of the day, ending up way down in 10th while the world champion headed the times.

"I'm chilled," said the Scot. "I'm not thinking about whether this is a crucial weekend. It's the same at the beginning of the year when people were asking about championships and all the rest of it.

"It's not won or lost at one race. It's an accumulation of races that give you a championship or lose you a championship.

"The fact is at this point they [Ferrari] as a team have done better than we have as a team - including myself in that team element," he added. "There's no magic; you just have to get on and do your job and if we lose the chance to keep the championship alive this weekend it won't just be because of this weekend.

"I'm reasonably optimistic as to where we are relative to Ferrari," he continued. "They've been better in qualifying than us earlier in the season, so if we can be close to them and maybe even quicker, then we have a good chance for the race."

The Hungaroring is such a tight and twisting circuit, with a big emphasis on aerodynamics, that the set-up time the Scot has lost could cost him dearly as he bids to get a crucial place ahead of Schumacher in Saturday qualifying.

After his Friday problems, Coulthard is to discuss the kerbing that wrecked his car when he attends the regular Friday driver's briefing.

The Scot is annoyed that a new kerb had been built at Turn 11 and the teams had not been notified. When he ran over it on the sixth lap of first practice, his undertray was ripped apart and he could only leaf through a magazine as his car was repaired.

"I made a mistake and understeered wide," he said. "There's a different type of kerb on the exit of a corner - it's two and a half inches high. It is not angled. You just run straight into them.

"So I ran wide and smashed the underside of my chassis and I'm going to have to change cars for qualifying. I'm a little bit surprised, not just because I made a mistake and I paid the price for that, but because those kerbs have been put in place.

"It's one of the things we will need to talk about with Charlie this evening," said Coulthard after practice. "We've discussed many times in the drivers' meetings that a penalty for making a mistake should be a loss of time. It shouldn't be damaging your chassis.

"If you hit a barrier then there you go, because that's the limit of the circuit, but to have your car smashed on a kerb like that is just stupid, so we will be discussing it."