Farewell to all that

This weekend the focus in Brazil will all be on Lewis Hamilton and Felipe Massa and their fight for the world championship. And that will be just perfect for David Coulthard, who is hoping that his last weekend as an active Formula One driver will pass with the minimum of fuss.

Drivers come and go, but Coulthard will certainly be missed. Few of his contemporaries share his sense of humour or talent for coming up with a witty line, fewer still have conducted their career with such dignity and all round good manners. You'd be hard pressed to find anyone in the paddock with a bad word to say about him.

Having recognised that the time was right to stop, DC is heading into retirement in typical style, on his terms and with plenty of things already in place to keep him busy in the coming years.

"Retirement had been a growing thought since the beginning of the year, and it just crystallises in your mind one day that it's the right thing," he says. "It takes a lot of energy and focus to compete at this level, and after 15 years, with no real chance of returning to my winning ways, it's better for all to acknowledge that and not fight it, and to go with it and be part of the future success of the team."

He denies that he 'jumped before he was pushed,' faced with what could have turned into an unsuccessful fight to retain a seat for 2009.

"It wasn't about fighting for the contract, which inevitably given the way things have played out this year would, on reflection, have been difficult. It's just a realisation of I've had my time, and I'm entirely comfortable to move on to the next phase.

"I feel I can walk out of the paddock as a racing driver in Brazil with my head held high. I acted in an honourable way with the teams that I worked with, I was able to contribute a lot of points to those teams, and some victories along the way. OK, I didn't win a championship, but I finished second to Michael."

Mark Webber, Jarno Trulli, David Coulthard, and Jenson Button © XPB

This time last year retirement wasn't on DC's mind. But as with many drivers in a similar situation, once the thought is in your head, you have to react to it.

"Absolutely," he agrees. "It is something that when you know, you know. It's like anything in life, whether it be a relationship or whatever, you have a thought, you have a growing feeling, and then you have a confirmation. With some people that comes quickly, some people it takes a bit longer."

In some ways the last four years have been a bonus, because clearly at one stage there was a chance that he would not find a drive at the end of his McLaren years. Instead life took a different turn with Red Bull.

"I wasn't ready to stop at the end of nine years at McLaren," he says. "I had the energy and motivation to be a part of something new. Although a lot of people probably asked why is he doing that after McLaren?

"The reality is the journey I started along with Red Bull and Christian Horner and Adrian Newey obviously has seen a reward for those efforts in that we've won a grand prix. OK, not with Red Bull Racing, but with the organisation, which I've played a part, along with the others, in helping to put together. So it's satisfying in that respect."

He would of course have preferred to have walked away after a better season than the one he's had. There was a third place in the crazy Canadian GP, and a seventh in Singapore, another race affected by incidents and safety cars. Aside from that, it's not been a very fruitful season.

"On balance it's been a disappointing year, with only a couple of points scoring finishes and a lot of incidents," says DC. "I had a suspension failure in Malaysia and various other things which stopped running and affected your ability to get on and deliver. That's kind of the way these things go, and I've been around long enough to know that looking back is not going to change the results.

"I was delighted to get a podium in Canada, and it came the race before the point at which I wanted to announce that I would be stopping in F1. Obviously there was a set of circumstances that enabled that to happen, but that's racing, and it was the best result the team had all year. I recognised that it could be my last podium in F1, and it was where I scored my first points in F1 in 1994, so there was a sort of symmetry to the whole thing."

The points scoring races aside, it's been largely a tale of woe for David.

Indeed he's been involved in an extraordinary number of collisions with other drivers this year, and more than once his race has been ruined on the first lap.

The most spectacular example was in Fuji, where a suspension failure after a bump sent him off the road at high speed. A look through the year's results triggers a series of bad memories.

Felipe Massa and David Coulthard collide in the first turn in Melbourne © LAT

"Australia was disappointing because Felipe [Massa] didn't really need to be diving down my inside," DC recalls. "It wasn't a Ferrari lapping me, it was a Ferrari racing me.

"I think he should have made the manoeuvre stick more, because he left me in doubt as to whether he was past, and clearly he was in doubt, and we ended up in a situation where we came together and crashed.

"In Bahrain I was out of position on the grid because something happened in qualifying which put me in an ugly place on the grid, and then I got hit by [Adrian] Sutil, then hit by someone else. It just reminded me that being down that end of the grid is not good!

"In Spain I think I was running OK, just outside the points, and [Timo] Glock and I came together. He tried to go down the inside again, a bit like the Massa situation. I think you've got to make the move stick or not.

"Monaco was fairly disappointing, I had a qualifying crash but still managed to maintain the 10th place on the grid," he continues. "That's where I realised some of the difficulties we have with this car in the wet, normally in the wet it wouldn't be a problem for us, but I had a lot of problems getting the power down at low speed, and got pressured into running too close to Nakajima, and got involved in aquaplaning at the top of the hill.

"Silverstone was a first-lap racing incident, Massa spun, [Sebastian] Vettel went one side, I went the other side, and tried to make a pass at Priory. He didn't know I was there because of the spray, so it was a racing incident in that respect. In Germany Rubens [Barrichello] and I came together. It was a strange place for Rubens to try and pass me, but anyway!

"In Valencia I got out of place at the start, people were missing chicanes and gaining positions and there was no penalty for them. I was on low fuel and had low top speed, so took a dive on [Giancarlo] Fisichella from a long way back, it was over optimistic on my part.

"In Italy I had a problem early on with brake balance, the adjuster jammed, and I ran off the circuit with a locked wheel. In the end I had a coming together with Nakajima, when he passed me on the outside in Parabolica. He cut a bit too tight, and it went wrong from there. So it's been a tale of wrong place wrong time, a lot of the time..."

Life is hard at what he so colourfully terms the 'ugly' end of the grid. DC has made Q3 on a few occasions this year, but in general he's been caught in that midfield pack, unable to find the little extra speed that has got teammate Mark Webber into the top 10 on a regular basis.

"It's fair to say that this year's car from a driveability point of view and rideability of kerbs it doesn't suit me as well, and I've struggled a bit with that situation," he explains. "Through my career I've seen that some cars have suited me better than others. Aerodynamically I think this was a better car than we had in the past, but perhaps not mechanically. In terms of driveability without traction control, I found it more difficult.

David Coulthard at speed in the Belgian Grand Prix © Red Bull

"Qualifying is very close, very tight, and sometimes I've missed out on Q3 by fractions, but that's the bottom line - it is tight, and you've got to make sure that you get there. Clearly Mark [Webber] in his short F1 career has always done a good job in qualifying, and tends to be less strong in the races. And typically I've always been stronger in the races throughout my career. But being in the wrong place on the grid makes it very difficult to do anything with that."

After Brazil the stress of finding those extra hundredths in qualifying will be a thing of the past. But he'll still get his fix of driving from time-to-time, and he'll remain closely involved with the team.

"There will be a whole host of things," he says. "Development of the simulator is one aspect that I'll get involved in, to try and make it as real as it can be. Red Bull have call on me if it's young driver assessment, if it's technical things within the team where they don't want to disturb the race drivers, to keep them focussed.

"I think it enhances the ability of Red Bull Racing to compete like Ferrari or McLaren, because they don't need to call on the race drivers all the time to get an opinion, and by testing alongside the race drivers I'll have a flavour for what they require from the car, and also Adrian's known me my whole career and is able to well translate my description of what a car does."

He's also got plenty of other irons in the fire. There's been no confirmation as yet, but the world is assuming that he'll be part of the BBC TV coverage, and he's also still doing things outside racing. Is his old team boss Jackie Stewart, still busy 35 years after stopping F1, a role model of sorts?

"Jackie is a great example of life after sport," says DC. "A number of sportsmen have had great business careers, whether it's associated with their sport or not. I will actively remain in the sport over the coming years, because that's where my enjoyment comes, that's where I want to use my time and energy.

"I do have other business interests and investments. The hotels are one of the better known aspects of that, and at this time we'll be going through a sales process of my main hotel, the Columbus, which despite these difficult economic times will still see a significant return on my initial investment eight years ago.

"On that particular investment over eight years I will see millions in profit. That's a public one, but there are other investments that will continue to fuel my business life and fund my 'living' life. Apart from the obvious one there will be other things where I'll use my knowledge, experience and public image name, fame and reputation."

One other aspect of David's life will change dramatically in the coming months when he becomes a father for the first time. He denies that the news played any role in his retirement decision: "It had nothing to do with it."

Karen Minier, Sir Jackie Stewart, and David Coulthard on the grid in Singapore © XPB

But doesn't fatherhood make anyone think differently about things?

"Yes it does, but Michael won championships as a father, other drivers in the pitlane are fathers," he says. "I don't know how many are, but there are quite a few. And in life a lot of people do a lot of difficult and dangerous things while having a family. I've been asked that a few times, I don't know whether it's because I was seen, not as the eternal bachelor, but I wasn't married and settled down like other drivers."

The timing is perfect as he'll be around for the birth and the first few months, but once the season starts, he'll be off travelling again.

"I'm still going to be testing occasionally," he says, "I'm going to be going to the grands prix, and I'm going to be actively involved in other aspects of business that I've developed over my adult life. In theory I should be there more, but in reality I won't physically be there more.

"However as a sportsman, sport is your number one priority, it takes priority over everything else. And in removing that from me it will enable to me realise other things in my life and start the next phase of the journey. And children are part of that."

He already has had something of a taste of being at least a step-dad, since Karen has a 10-year-old daughter.

"Karen knows, she's been there, I know she's a good mum, I've been with her since her daughter was seven," says DC. "I'm not a surrogate father to her, she has a father, but the majority of the time she's with Karen. I think she's a well adjusted, well mannered young girl, who's obviously going to be tall like her mum!

"I'm really looking forward to it. It's the right time in my life, it was a conscious decision from Karen and I to work on a family, and it couldn't have worked our better timing-wise.

"I'm absolutely delighted, and I hope for our son the sort of opportunities that I've been given in life. I've had a good upbringing, in a nice area, and was given an opportunity in life. I obviously had to make the rest myself, but that's all that I want for our son."