David Coulthard Q&A

"Yeah it is. Obviously the accident takes away a great deal of how everyone's going to feel and react and all the rest of it. It's a sport at the end of the day, and a fatality is a terrible thing. But puttiing that to one side, I felt ready for the season, before my disappointing qualifying position. But I didn't get too down on that, because I knew the circumstances that led to me being out of track position, and I felt that I would get back up."



"I cocked up the first runs, so I have to take responsibility for that. Thereafter I had traffic and red flags and we hadn't had the chance to understand what the car was doing, so we didn't adjust it for the last run, and that was it, we ran out of time. So I knew I would move forward. The car in race trim was basically quite well balanced. We understand some differences between ourselves and Ferrari that we need to work on, to improve the pace of the car. But given the stability of the rear, and the traction that we have, I feel that it's something we can achieve. We were just under-prepared for the start of the season. There will be a test happening at Magny-Cours before Malaysia."



"In reality it's probably a tall order. It all depends on how well the Magny-Cours test goes. If we find what we're looking for, and we know what we're looking for, then yes, it's just a simple fact... The fundamentals of the car are good, but we're just not in the right area, in the zone. So it's going to be a long hard fight. In the same way, we've been pretty quick here in the last couple of years in relation to Ferrari, and yet they've been quick in other circuits, that's probably going to be the situation."



"Absolutely. I had a good little battle. I could have lost it all in the first straight when we touched with Ralf and Heinz-Harald, and I managed to get out of that. I avoided Montoya coming down my inside, which I saw in my mirrors, and gave him a lot of room and let him go straight on. Then I managed to get past a couple of people under braking, which was fun. I left plenty of room for Rubens, because I thought I was past him, but I just didn't want to take the risk of us coming together, so I went wide. Which meant he almost had the chance to pass me again. So it was just a race of being careful, taking opportunities when they came. It was a fortunate but hard fought six points."



"Exactly. That's why I was keeping myself in that one second gap. Any closer than that and I was going to affect engine temperatures and brake temperatures and all that. Any less than that and if he makes a mistake you're not going to get an advantage. I had to try and juggle between maintaining the car and keeping him in that one second gap."



"I think the McLaren is a good car on the brakes, and I think it's one of my strengths, late braking. Put those two things together and you can make the guy on the inside feel a bit silly!"



"Definitely... There are so many things that if I knew when I first started that I know today, I would drive differently. And that enables you to try and read a little bit what's happening in the race. You've still got to push and as the car changes and loses weight and the tyres get worse then the car will always change lap to lap. It's about trying to read exactly what's happening. I had one moment at the fast chicane out the back where I ran out on the grass. I thought I'm not doing that again, because you could easily put yourself out of the race. You need to be there to score points, especially at the beginning of the season."



"They're on the ball. There's no question that round this track they've been setting the pace and we've been catching up. While I don't believe that - to use someone well known in the team's words - I don't think we've optimised the car. What's another way of saying that... We haven't got the most out of the car as yet. It's not an excuse, it's fact. We can look back to why we haven't got as much out of the car as we should have done, but in reality that doesn't help us for the future."



"The car will go quicker. Whether that's enough to overcome where they are, because naturally as quickly as we can develop, they can develop... It just depends whether they are up against a ceiling or not. In previous years we've been up against a ceiling and they've been able to move up closer. Time will tell whether there's a similar case this year."



"We've had no history of that happening during winter testing. The great thing about carbonfibre suspension, if that's what it was, is that it's very light for its strength. The downside is that unlike when you actually fabricate a steel wishbone, and you can see the joint, you can't see what happened inside. You hope that everything is bonded together, you hope that everything is laid up perfectly. And it just takes it not to quite be bonded perfectly, and that's it, you've got a potential weak mark. We had a couple of suspension failures last year in Monza. It's one of the risks."



"It's not something that would be useful information to me. I wouldn't start braking earlier."



"I don't think so. Unless you've got a history of a particular weakness in the car, I don't believe you should pull a car out of a race. If you're scared of something failing, stay in the garage. These things are designed to do 58 racing laps, but not much more."



"Thankfully they hit the sides of my wheels. Had they touched my wing, that would have been my race over, so I was very fortunate there."