Coulthard's Qualifying Nightmare Continues

McLaren's David Coulthard started a new Formula One season with the same old problem on Saturday.

The Scot, whose title hopes were wrecked by a serious case of the Saturday afternoon yips last year, was once again tormented by a qualifying mistake at the season-opening Australian Grand Prix.

The one consolation for the thoughtful 32-year-old, who qualified 12th and directly behind his Finnish teammate Kimi Raikkonen, was that last year he ended up a winner in Melbourne from 11th place.

"Obviously you could see the mistake I made at the end of the lap," said the Scot whose car bounced alarmingly over the dirt runoff after he went wide on the final corner. "That cost a little bit of time but ultimately probably not a big difference in grid position.

"It wasn't scary, it was frustrating because quite clearly I made a mistake and that's not good enough."

It was not the impression that Coulthard, who will set a Formula One record on Sunday for the number of starts - 133 - with one constructor, had wanted to make.

With his Formula One future up in the air after McLaren signed Colombian Juan Pablo Montoya for 2005, the Scot knows he must excel to secure a competitive drive and stay in the sport for a 12th season. He said his car had suffered some slight damage to the bodywork when he ran off but he would not have to use the spare.

"Now it's a question of hopefully using our race pace to come forward," he said. "We just need to get out there and see what our race performance is because I think we've taken a conservative approach so far to the amount of running we've done to try and make sure that we can be as strong as possible.

"Historically you can see that not a lot of people finish this race and that's obviously the key we are looking for."

Team boss Ron Dennis agreed that McLaren, who had high hopes for their new car after failing to introduce its predecessor last season, were not where they wanted to be in terms of performance.

"Maybe we've taken a slightly conservative approach but we are a team that looks back on our experience and there have been plenty of times...where finishing and just picking up four or five points makes the difference to the World Championship.

"We openly admit we lack some pace, definitely," he said. "We know that all of us that contribute to the performance of the team have to do better. But the fact is that we have taken a conservative approach because we think that is important.

"Last year we started 11th and 17th on the grid and we finished first and third," said Dennis. "I don't know that we are going to be doing that tomorrow but most certainly I think our strategy will see us with better and stronger finishing positions."