David Coulthard Q&A

"I feel good, but I'm very aware of the fact that at the end of the day if McLaren and Ferrari are still the two main teams - and none of us know whether we will be or whether someone else will take a step up - the bottom line is I still need to beat Michael and Mika. There's no indication that they're getting any slower, so the job is still going to be as difficult as it always has been. I still believe that I'm improving as a driver, and the results will either prove or disprove that. But I think last year I generally improved as the year went on, and I feel pretty good with the work I've done in the winter. We'll wait and see."



"All the things I'm doing in my life are to allow me to focus on driving the car. Things that don't need to happen or are a distraction have been hopefully removed. I've trained more. I've worked more closely with the build of the new car. I don't know how to quantify what difference that will make, but I've just generally been more involved in the whole process, and been more confident in saying when I wanted to be in the car and when I didn't want to be in the car. Will it make a difference? I hope so. But I can't honestly say whether it will or not. It's still the same quick guys you have to beat and you have to be on top of your form to beat them. It's not as if I'm trying to climb the mountain to prove to myself if I can do that or not. What I'm trying to do is stay balanced on top of the mountain. If I can get to a consistent level then the rest will follow."



"I think it's a very individual thing. I don't think it really matters. It's whatever you personally feel. I choose to decide in December, because I believe it's an influential part of the season. Things that you develop in November will be on the new car in January and will be there in Melbourne. That's your job. It's no good turning up, racing the car, and getting out and saying it's a shitbox. You've got to develop the thing. And then you can genuinely say we haven't taken a bigger step forward as we needed to, or whatever. Then I chose not to do the first test in January, because I felt fatigued, I felt like I needed a bit of time off. So I didn't drive for four weeks, and then came back and did the test last week in Jerez. After last year I realised I didn't need to do every test. Previous to that I thought 'I've got to be in the car every time they drive.' But after the accident I realised that I didn't test for six weeks, and every race I just got stronger, because I think I was fresher, mentally."



"Yes. We'll use Alex a lot, maybe another test driver as well, to make sure that Mika and I only do the key tests. There will be a lot of key tests because of tyre development, but you need time off as well."



"The bottom line is whatever the car, you know that Mika is going to be able to drive it quickly. Generally over the last couple of years I've had fewer 'difficult' tracks. It's responding to changes, it's running reliably. We can't ask for much more than that. Then it all comes down to whether it's good enough or not, and we won't know until Melbourne."



"Not so much, because in December we were running with the same back end. The engine and gearbox has already been tested. The most difficult thing to get reliable on a car is the engine, and the gearbox and the electronics, but all of those have been running since December. So we've had no real problems."



"I did only one test with the gizmos in Jerez, in the second week of December. I did a day of running with that. The rest of the time it's been Alex's turn to work with it. I'm not sure whether Mika's done any running with it. I doubt it. We've kind of developed it and put it to one side. A lot of that traction control stuff they had sitting on the shelf from '93. I'm sure you can always improve it with new software and new technology, but the basics of how much wheelslip you want, front to rear, is the same. There's an optimum for any tyre, and you develop that using the telemetry and the driver."



"I think it's great for F1 to have the tyre war, but it's a pain in the arse for the drivers in a way because you then lose the ability to compare every car on the grid. Jaguar could win a race because they have the right tyres. That would be a fantastic thing for the sport, but in terms of perception that would be seen as them stepping up and being better than McLaren and Ferrari. When it might actually be that they were just better than Williams and Benetton on that day. So what you have now is two formulas; you have Formula Bridgestone and Formula Michelin. It's such an influential part of the car. You can spend a year finding 0.2-0.3s in aerodynamics and mechanical adjustments. If you find that much during a year, you're doing well. But you can put better tyres on and gain a second a lap. It's incredible. It throws open F1 completely, and it will mean more teams winning races, but it makes it more difficult. If you're just trying to win a championship the best thing that can happen is that you have the least amount of teams and drivers to try to beat."



"There will be, definitely. The weather is going to play a part. When there are wet weather conditions, it might be that the Michelins are much better. There will be times when the conditions will suit the tyres."



"Pat's playing a central role, but he's going to be overseeing my car. It's much more balanced I think. Previously Adrian gravitated towards Mika's car and didn't feel that he could take an overview, because it's hard to think about two cars. Pat will naturally oversee what's happening on my car. The more clever people you have on your side, it's got to be better. I think the changes in the way the engineering line-up is done will strengthen my side. It's still going to be difficult to beat the other guys, but it should help."



"McLaren is very open, but naturally in the heat of doing the job, there are certain things when you are focussing on a car as an engineer that you won't put into the system until the end of the session, and it might have been critical to a qualifying position or something. If your engineer is thinking about finding out what the other car is doing all the time then he's not thinking about your car. So that's where I believe it will be strengthened now, because there was never really someone there before to float around without having to worry about tyre pressures, fuel levels, how many laps we've got left, what time's left. So that frees Pat up. And Pat's a clever guy, he's really grown into that role. McLaren needed a person in that role and he's the perfect person for that role. He's following up things that happen. I don't know his official title, but his basically like a floating engineer or a chief engineer. He'll be on the pit wall and overseeing what's happening between the cars, but primarily during the race weekend overseeing what's happening on my car, but that's only because Adrian works on the other side. It balances things up a little bit in terms of the amount of people I have working on my car."



"Phil Brew, who was Mika's 'number two' last year. He's a bright guy. He's a new engineer, but I've worked with him in testing. You never know how someone's going to handle the pressure of making a decision when there's five minutes to go and you need to get the car out. I believe he'll be able to handle that and the system will hopefully cover that."



"Not just because it was me, but I tell you I think that Magny-Cours victory was one of the hardest fought victories of the year. Forget it was me in the car! You've got someone running round in third place, he overtakes the second placed guy, which normally only happens in pit stops, he then overtakes someone who's accepted as being a very aggressive racing driver and very hungry to win, and pisses off into the distance and wins the Grand Prix. I thought that was a stunning victory! I know it doesn't sit with people's perceptions of me in F1, because I haven't done it consistently, but forget it was me. Look at that one race - if that was Michael who'd won, it would have been classic Schumacher. I thought it was the business!"



"Every race there are only 10 points for winning, but it is important to get a bit of momentum. Even if you don't win the race, although obviously that's the goal, you've got the first step on the ladder. Look at last year - in Melbourne we didn't finish, and then in Brazil I got disqualified. So straight away you're potentially 20 points down on whoever won those races. You've got to score in every race - that's got to be your goal."