Coulthard collisions and Monza tears: The inside story of Mika Hakkinen\u2019s dramatic 1999 title victory<\/a><\/p>\n\u201cIt was a quick car, but tricky in the beginning,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt became less tricky as the year went on. I can\u2019t remember how many races Damon won in the car; Ayrton had pole in the first three, and Nigel won in Australia at the last race.<\/p>\n
\u201cI led at Monza, and I was asked to roll over. So I finished up his [Damon\u2019s] chuff (or would have, had Coulthard\u2019s car not run out of fuel at the Parabolica on the final lap) and, at Estoril, I finished up his chuff.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was good enough for me to get podiums, right there, so it was a pretty good car.\u201d<\/p>\n
Coulthard\u2019s breakthrough win didn\u2019t come during his eight races in 1994, and it would be another full year from his maiden podium before his moment of glory arrived, and that came behind the wheel of Williams\u2019 FW17B.<\/p>\n
The first specification FW17 had proven fast but fragile across the first 12 races of the season, not helped by both Hill and Coulthard making some high-profile mistakes, such as Coulthard spinning off from pole position on the formation lap at Monza.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had a lack of experience and, even in \u201995, I made some really silly mistakes. Spinning on the way to the grid at the Nurburgring when I was on pole\u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cAt Monza, they red-flagged\u00a0the race because someone else had an issue. So then I took the T-car, led the Grand Prix, and, on Lap 13, the front upright seized. So yeah, it was an element of being unlucky in some of them, and silly mistakes in others.\u201d<\/p>\n
Coulthard, now a prominent member of the F1 media through his post-racing career as a TV commentator and pundit, said he\u2019s fully aware that, in a very different sport nowadays, he likely wouldn\u2019t have been given such a lenient start to his career, even though it was becoming clear he had the speed to succeed at the front.<\/p>\n
\u201cI got into a run where I had five pole positions (sic) in a row,\u201d he said. \u201cThe \u201995 car was a great car, I loved that car.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think my first one was Argentina, in torrential rain. I was clicking with the car in terms of speed, but the results just weren\u2019t quite coming.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe benefit of youth is that you don\u2019t know what you don\u2019t know. I wasn\u2019t\u00a0asked too much about it back then. It was a different media than the one that you work in today. Everything\u2019s better, the whole sport is elevated, you\u2019re all much more informed and knowledgeable.<\/p>\n
\u201cBack then, the old tabloid media guys would all get together, some of them wouldn\u2019t even go to the track, and they would share the stories, file the stories, and be in the newspaper on the Monday. So it was a bit more of a cushy number.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf it was the me of 30 years ago, then I would just be in and out. But, if it were me as a racer, 30 years younger, doing it now in this generation, I\u2019d be just better because of more knowledge, more experience.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou could be a naive village boy in Formula 1\u00a0back then. You cannot be that way today.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was always a focused professional, but when we talked about strategy, it was like, \u2018Well, what lap do we want to put fuel? Do you want to do a long stint, or do you want to be a bit lighter at the beginning?\u2019 That then dictated what your lap was, because you don\u2019t have fuel to get to that one.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, if it was a long run to the first corner, you might want to be a bit lighter not to lose the place. If it was Monza, it was definitely one stop, and you wanted to go as long and heavy as you could. You just kept getting quicker. So you would, as a team, pick the last moment you could based on how much fuel you could get in the car. So the strategy was a lot simpler!\u201d<\/p>\n
Everything would change for Coulthard at Estoril, as Williams brought along its revised FW17B to the Portuguese Grand Prix. Technical director Patrick Head and chief designer Adrian Newey had made some modifications to the car aimed at making it more predictable and drivable, and it had an immediate impact. Or, at least, it did in qualifying\u2026<\/p>\n
\u201cAdrian came up with the top wishbone\u2026 maybe it was the bottom, I can\u2019t remember!\u201d Coulthard said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut it was also shrouding the drive shaft, so it became an aerodynamic shape, and it was load-bearing. It was Adrian\u00a0exploiting the aero efficiencies of the car a lot and all that sort of stuff. It was really great to work with Adrian through that period.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe shroud was just introduced for qualifying. We hadn\u2019t done any long runs on it, so we didn\u2019t race it. So they put that gearbox on to qualifying, put it on pole, and then took it off, and put the standard wishbones on for the race.\u201d<\/p>\n
In terms of strategy, Williams plumped for an all-out assault on the lead, utilising the speed of its young charger behind the wheel. This resulted in Coulthard, weirdly, setting the fastest lap of the race on Lap 2, his very first full-speed lap.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was told, \u2018This is a three-stopper, treat it like qualifying, you\u2019ve got to go!’\u201d Coulthard laughed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI got the jump at the start, Michael was behind me, and I got to Lap 8 or 9, and I was exhausted!\u201d<\/p>\n
Mimicking gasping behind the wheel, he said, \u201cI was pushing, looking in the mirrors, and Michael was still there! But, a lap or two before the first pitstop, he started to drop off.\u201d<\/p>\n
Coulthard went on to take the chequered flag in first place, taking his maiden victory in what, by today\u2019s standards, would have been his first season.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was my 21st race,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember the Autosport magazine, which was quite popular at that time, the headline was, \u2018At last!\u2019 After 21 races!<\/p>\n
\u201cBut I had pole position, the win, and fastest lap.\u201d<\/p>\n
Having taken pole at Monza and Estoril, Coulthard followed it up with another two pole positions at the Nurburgring, where he spun off on the formation lap, and another pole position at Aida. His confidence had been massively boosted by the victory, prompting him to believe young drivers today can spiral if such breakthroughs don\u2019t come.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt made a huge difference. Because you don\u2019t know how easy it is to win until you win,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen, when you win, it just lines everything up. It just changes your confidence. I\u2019d obviously won in other formulas, in every formula, but it\u2019s not until you do it that you know it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think sometimes, when drivers go through their career never getting a winning car, they get frustrated, and then it becomes a spiral like that. So it was totally important.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been incredibly lucky with the opportunities I had and the teams I raced for, and I don\u2019t have any lack of appreciation for that.<\/p>\n
\u201cI loved it, no regrets, even the silly mistakes and everything, all the blow-ups when I was leading. Because why put that negativity into what\u2019s otherwise been an amazing journey?\u201d<\/p>\n
Coulthard\u2019s tenure with Williams ended at the conclusion of the 1995 season, moving to McLaren as he made way for Jacques Villeneuve at the Grove squad.<\/p>\n
Before Coulthard\u2019s time at Williams came to an end, however, the Scot was infamously involved in a bizarre incident in Adelaide, a race-ending crash that would cost him over \u00a32.5 million\u2026 stay tuned for the second part of PlanetF1.com\u2019s interview with David Coulthard!<\/p>\n
Read Next:\u00a0Aston Martin issues statement as Yuki Tsunoda rumours enter overdrive<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"30 years on from his first F1 victory, David Coulthard has remembered his time stepping into Ayrton Senna\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":184406,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[2074,64,63,874,817,813,816,818,44,17165,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-184405","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-formula-1","8":"tag-adrian-newey","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-david-coulthard","12":"tag-f1","13":"tag-formula-1","14":"tag-formula1","15":"tag-home-page","16":"tag-news","17":"tag-popular","18":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=184405"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/184405\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/184406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=184405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=184405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=184405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}