DC vows to bounce back from shunt

The Scot, who is fighting a rearguard action to finish second in the World Championship, hit the barriers on his first flying lap of the weekend after misjudging the Fagnes sequence of bends.

He ended up at the bottom of a timesheet headed by newly crowned World Champ Michael Schumacher.

"I went over the kerb and lost the back end," admitted Coulthard. "There was grass creeping on the back of the kerb which could have contributed. If you make a mistake, you pay the price so it is very easy to deal with."

Coulthard doesn't think his mistake will have too much impact on his chances in Sunday's race.

"Obviously, we lost a little bit of information for tomorrow but then we can look at what Mika was doing and hopefully we can learn a bit from that," he said. "Every lap you don't do on the track is a potential handicap but I think that if you have a good car, and everything is working well, then it is not such a big problem as you might think.

He added: "It doesn't look as if we are setting the pace here going by where Mika is [fifth quickest], but we are in amongst the front runners and it is going to be close."