David Coulthard Q&A

"There's something seriously out of bed. We don't go from the first few races being on the lead lap, but obviously not the quickest car, to being lapped, when I haven't had any incidents as such during the race. We didn't have the qualifying pace, and clearly in the race Renault had the legs on us."



"I had a lot of understeer at the start. It took a long time for that to clear up, and then the rear started to slide, and there was a total lack of grip. It's not as if the balance was particularly bad. I was thinking, because I had a lot of time obviously on my own out there, that if this was a car that was leading the race you'd think that this was a pretty well-balanced car. But the problem is we're not doing the lap times, and not generating the grip, whether than be mechanical or downforce, and I was just sliding all over the place."



"Yes, we dropped some wing just to get our speeds up a bit, because we were last through the speed trap down into Rivazza, so that didn't bode well for lapping the Minardis. I didn't expect to get lapped in the race myself! It's just one of those things."



"That unfortunately was my lot. I made one mistake which was letting Michael past when I got up the kerb, but I was just keen to not be accused of anything on that, otherwise I believe I drove a hard race, but just not on the same pace as everyone else. It was a new car for this race, and we didn't have a chance to drive it beforehand, and obviously the team will have a good look and check if there were any problems."



"We clearly struggled more here than I certainly anticipated before coming to the race. Given that we hadn't done any developments prior to coming to this race, I didn't believe that we would suddenly be sitting on pole, but I clearly felt that as I have a good history at this track that I would be able to extract a lot from the car. It was a new car for this race, and in a way it felt pretty forgiving, and my comment was at the time that if we have a wet race at least I feel it's quite consistent. But the risk is, and I've mentioned it before, a quick car is usually a difficult car to drive. It's on edge because it finds the edge. It was just lacking grip in the race, rather than having a big imbalance. They called for an adjustment in the pitstop, and I said I have understeer and oversteer, in equal quantities. So you just leave it. Just struggle, struggle."



"Well, we go testing at Mugello, and we try and work on the car for Barcelona. We didn't expect to be as far away here, and we don't expect to be as far away in Barcelona."