The Flying Scotsman
Taking time out from his hectic schedule prior to the Race of Champions in December, Formula 1 legend David Coulthard spoke to gambling.com about an inconsistent 2007, the season ahead, and why one of his fondest memories of F1 isn’t about driving.
Let’s start with the Race of Champions at the weekend—how competitive do the drivers get over meetings of this nature?
Well, if you listen to the media stuff that we do beforehand, it’s all along a similar line, which is to have some fun, hang out and share experiences with drivers from all over the world. But when you put your helmet on and the lights change, you want to do the best that you can. Personally, it’s been more about the social aspect of it than it has about the race. What that means is that my competitive streak and my main focus goes into driving a Formula 1 car, and although I get pissed off when I don’t do a good job in a Formula 1 car, it honestly doesn’t bother me either way for the Race of Champions because after the season it’s nice to race free from pressure. What the audience don’t see is that all the drivers are in the changing room—not that I’m saying it’s nice to be naked with other drivers (laughs), but that’s where we all hang out which is unique in any sort of motor sport. Typically, through my whole racing career, from eleven years old until now, you have your separate motor homes, your separate garages and your separate teams, and you have a car set-up individually for you. Here, if a car comes off in one of the races and he’s hit the barrier, he’s finished his race; so he gets out, you get in, put some foam behind your seat and off you go. So it’s more about the camaraderie and the entertaining of the crowd than it is about the ‘I need my pedals moving slightly’—if you’re a short-arse they put foam under seat, if you’re tall they take it out.
So it’s good to be racing away from the pressure of Formula 1?
Yes, exactly. I think that would probably encapsulate what it’s like for the majority of the established drivers, but I think because there is always a young up-and-coming guy, then of course it’s probably the biggest event he’s done, and like anything at that stage in your life, you’ve got little else going on. For me, at 36, having been in Formula 1 for 14 years, I’ve got relationships, I’ve got business, I’ve got bank accounts, I’ve got a lot going on, so we do it for the charitable aspect. The money that is normally forwarded to the drivers, we are donating to the British Spine Foundation Charity, which is what the event supports. Of course the organisers make money because that’s their business and I can understand that, but the likes of (Michael) Schumacher, myself, (Christian) Loeb, all of the guys there, are turning up effectively for nothing, and that is unique in itself.
There’s nothing in Formula 1 bigger than the Monaco Grand Prix David Coulthard
Are you looking forward to driving around the new Wembley Stadium?
I am, yes. I was there doing the pre-event stuff and it was awesome. And yes, it was over budget and late in being finished and all of those other things, but it’s still impressive. To put it in perspective, my driver has driven for me since 1995, and he’s a big football fan. He turned up to meet me at the airport wearing a suit; now, he normally wears jeans and a t-shirt or whatever, so I asked him “are you going to a funeral or something?”, and he says, “No, I’m going to Wembley.” He had his video camera and sat just behind the dugout where the bosses, managers… what the hell do you call them? Coaches! (laughs). Where the coaches sit. But he’s a real ‘footie’ fan so that was like ‘wow’. I also watched the England versus Croatia match on TV and saw how bad the pitch was so I didn’t feel that bad about the fact we were covering it in tarmac.
Looking back on last season, it was a bit up and down for you. You had some high points mixed with a few retirements due to technical issues. How would you summarise last season?
Yes, what you said is quite right in that it was up and down, and the high point of the season for the team was Mark (Webber) gaining a podium in Germany. My best finish was fourth in Japan in wet conditions, in what was a very challenging race. When I joined the team I had been nine years at McLaren winning grand prix for them and challenging for championships with them, so I was under no illusions that this would be a multi-year challenge to help Jaguar, as it was before it was bought by Red Bull, to find the right investment, find the right people and grow the team. When I arrived, the team had four hundred people and now it has six hundred, which is a fairly rapid increase in personnel in the space of three seasons. Inevitably, you lose some people from the system because they’re just not good enough, or they leave because they’ve lost the cosy little environment they had before. It takes time to get everyone pointing in the right direction and getting on top of reliability, procedures, and the larger these things get the more the communication stops face to face and it all becomes electronic, and sometimes it becomes difficult to know who actually owns the problem. So my role has developed from just being a driver, as it was before, to helping secure people like Adrian Newey and bringing him to the team and also setting a benchmark to say, ‘Look, from my experience of being in a winning team, this isn’t right or isn’t working, but this is how they would operate and I endorse that as a way of working’.
So looking at the year as a whole, the goal was to finish fifth in the Constructor’s Championship; we’d finished seventh since the Jaguar days. We got fifth by default because McLaren were removed from the (Constructor’s) Championship, so we would have been sixth, but in terms of our target for the year, coupled with the end result, we achieved our target. The target for next year is to finish fourth, and the reason we’re not aiming for third or second is that, although you’d like to fast-track to the front, you’ve got to be realistic. McLaren and Ferrari have a hell of a lot of history to fall back on, but third placed team BMW, who bought out Sauber who were a mid-rate team at the time, have proved that, with good investment and a manufacturer behind you, progress can be made. It was a development year, which means I expect a car that can challenge the BMWs next season.
How have the recent testing sessions been going?
We’ve got the new car coming in January, so the tests we’ve done so far have been in the old car but with certain updates and things turned off like the traction control and other toys that we had previously. We’ll go again in the old car at the end of January, just to continue the software development, and then we’ll get the new car, with Renault engine, and go from there.
People often assume that once the season is over F1 drivers are on a six month holiday but that’s very far from the truth. How important are the testing sessions that you do and how much preparation do you put into the car before the first race?
I did three days in Herez last weekend and probably did three grand prix in those three days. If you think of your typical race weekend, you do your grand prix on the Sunday, after practice on Friday and Saturday. I’m doing more than a grand prix each day when I’m testing, so from a physical point of view it’s much tougher than racing, and from a development perspective, you don’t develop on the race track because you don’t have the laps or engine revs available to test new front wings or electrics etc; all your work is done in testing. I’ve done all tests since I started as a test driver for Williams in 1992 as I like to feel it myself rather than just take someone else’s word for it, and help to guide the direction. It’s not an exact science, although it should be, but because it’s simulated at 60% scale in the wind tunnel, that is of course a different environment to that of a full size racing car on a race track, with drivers hitting curbs and all the things they do in race mode. It’s always a great challenge for teams to get the correlation between track performance and development performance, and that’s why you see that one year Ferrari will be up, it’ll be Renault the next, and McLaren the next, because they don’t always get it right all of the time.
This will be your 14th season in F1. Are you still as competitive as ever or has your motivation changed throughout your career?
I’m more relaxed about things. You know, some days it’s just not working and you can’t swim against it. When you’re younger, and things aren’t working, you just keep pushing and pushing and you normally make a mistake or get a shunt. Experience teaches you how to pace a grand prix season. I still feel as competitive and as motivated as I did when I finished second in the World Championship to Schumacher, but obviously the situation has changed in that I’m not in as competitive a car. So I could do two things: I could give up and leave the sport, or I can knuckle down and work hard at developing a team. There’s no magic involved in what’s happening here; it’s just a ‘people business’. The technology involved doesn’t develop itself, it’s developed by a team. If you can get the right people, you can achieve what Ferrari and McLaren and those guys are doing. And the bottom line is I like racing. I like Sunday afternoon when the guys walk away from the car and you’re sitting there wrapped in the carbon fibre of the one of the fastest racing cars in the world. It’s exciting… it’s bloody brilliant (laughs).
Is it hard to take the come down in speed when you’re in a normal car?
I get no excitement driving road cars because they are shite! You could do 200 miles an hour in a road car if you took the limiter off it, but I couldn’t handle it, when there’s just a piece of tin and some leather between you and the lamppost you’re about to hit. They’re not designed for speed, they’re designed for comfort and to get you from A to B—but a racing car is alive and exciting, and constantly changing and challenging.
Here’s a scenario: When Alonso left McLaren, I thought, “Hmm… why not put David Coulthard in there…?”
(Laughs) I think we had our time. Nine years, and I was the longest-serving driver they ever had. That didn’t happen by accident, or because I was Ron Dennis’ love child or anything like that; I gave them value and I delivered what they expected. So that wasn’t ever a thought for me. I had a long, four-year relationship with Williams, two of those as race driver and two of those as test driver, then nine years with McLaren, and now I’ve got a strong relationship with Red Bull, and there’s nothing like getting on with the job and getting results that people don’t expect you to. That’s what I’ve been able to do over the last few years with Red Bull, and that’s why I’m still employed. The owner of Red Bull, Dietrich Mateschitz, didn’t invest in this because he’s got nothing else to do with his money, he invested because it’s a good platform to make the whole thing work. You have to be seen to be successful and he’s got high demands and we’re going to deliver.
So if you do end up challenging for the title in a Red Bull car it would mean a lot more to you than just jumping into a Ferrari…
Oh God! If I end up challenging for the World Championship in a Red Bull, then Dietrich—I think he would kiss me. And he’s very much a ladies man (laughs). But yes, I’m turning 37 this year, and who knows if I’ll ever find myself in that position, but I don’t have a plan to stop right now, so let’s go!
The UK has got a healthy contingent of drivers at the moment. Are you inspirations to each other?
Yeah, I guess we’ve all had our years of being the best driver. For several years it was me, and then it was Jensen Button, and now Lewis has come in… We’ve all covered the same paths and raced the same tracks; I think we all understand the journey we’ve all made. Earlier on it’s all about making the right choices, getting the good opportunities, and being in the right car. In many ways, Lewis has had the dream start that I had. You come straight in a winning car and you think, ‘God, this is easy.’ All you’re doing is racing against your team mate, in most cases. What was unique about the world championship this year was that it was quite evenly-matched between two teams throughout most of the year. It’s quite interesting to me to watch the Lewis story because a lot of what he’s going through is what I’ve been through. When will he leave the UK? When will he ditch his loyal average-looking girlfriend? When will he stop having all the time in the world to sign all the autographs that are put in front of him? All the things that he previously said he’d never want to change didn’t take him long, because you just can’t do everything for everyone. He’ll continue to go through a development stage because he’s a young lad and when he’s passed 30, he’ll be better equipped to deal with the fame and fortune than he is at 22, despite the fact that we all think he’s a remarkably level-headed guy.
Do the other drivers see you as the elder statesman? Do they come to you for advice?
No. Drivers are way too cocky for that. Lewis came to me for advice before he was in Formula 1, a few years ago. He was contemplating leaving the McLaren system because they wanted him to do another year of European Formula 3000. He hadn’t won it and he didn’t want to. He wanted to move on and couldn’t understand why they would want to hold back his career. I said, “Look. Unless you have a sponsor that’s going to bankroll you, you have no guarantee that you’ll get to Formula 1. Do not leave McLaren because that is your best route to getting yourself a winning car in the future.” He was following me around, saying, “But I don’t understand. Why would they do this? Why would they do that?” Now he’s almost World Champion and why would he ever ask me anything again? I’m sure he looks at me and thinks, “Hah, what does he know?”
Who was your driving role model when you were Karting?
Well, I never had any particular contact with a Formula 1 driver, other than a few run-ins with Jackie Stewart—I drove for his son Paul Stewart’s team for three years from 1990 in the Vauxhall Lotus Team in Formula 3000. If you look at the evolution of Paul Stewart racing, it became Stewart Grand Prix, which then became Jaguar, which became Red Bull, so I’ve kind of done my time and come full circle. There are probably still 10 to 15 people at Red Bull that I worked with back in 1990.
But Jackie was a big influence. I was also a big fan of Alain Prost when I was testing at Williams and he was racing at Williams. At the first test I did, I was in one Williams car and I remember looking over and he was in the other. As far as I was concerned, I’d made it. I didn’t need to ever drive again. Of course, little did I know, a year later, Senna would have joined the team and would die in a crash and I would start my Formula 1 career.
It must have been an exciting time to start out. You were racing with Prost, Mansell came back, and then Damon Hill and Ayrton Senna…
Yeah. I looked over Mansell’s shoulder during ’94 because he took over for the last eight races. Senna, I remember very well. The first test he was doing was down in Portugal and I was always a standby in case any of these guys decided that they’d had enough, and I was always scheduled to do the last one anyway. I came in that morning and Senna was there and I thought maybe he wants to drive some more, but he didn’t; he just wanted to listen to my feedback on the car. It showed the level of dedication the guy had. He left no stone unturned.
When did you first move to Monaco and what was the allure?
My father was really into racing when I was growing up and he was the reason I got into cars. He used to go to grand prix and we’d watch all the races on the telly that he wasn’t at. There used to be BBC2 half-an-hour highlights with Murray Walker. I remember watching when I was 14, and he said, “Right, son, when you get to Formula 1, pack your bags and leave the UK. Move to Monaco and take care of your earnings.” He had a transport business and was always complaining about how much he had to pay in tax (laughs). When, ten years later, I got my first big cheque from Williams I took his advice. What was essentially a financial move has been a great career decision. If you live in the UK, you have to take a flight to every grand prix, apart from the British one. But if you live in Monaco, you’re a few hours from Barcelona, Austria, Germany, and so on, if you want to drive; much less if you’re flying. Then, when you’re training and you’re in the UK, you wake up and it’s pitch black, it’s horrible. When you wake up and the sun’s shining—it’s a piece of piss.
Do you still own the Columbus Hotel in Monte Carlo?
Yes, I’m still the majority shareholder in the Columbus, as well as three hotels in the UK called Dakota. I’m currently selling up, though. I’ve been involved in the business for the last seven years, and while I’m happy with the way it’s progressed I want to move on to new and more exciting things.
What are the most memorable moments of your career to date?
Two things: First, and most obvious, winning Monaco for the second time. That was a great high. The first time, Schumacher was ahead and he had a technical failure, so all I had to do was get to the end of the race. But the second time—there’s nothing quite like winning from the front. I’ve never been someone who just takes a win as it comes. I need to feel I got the maximum out of myself and I’m just very proud of that result.
The other would be my fiancée (Karen Minier). She was a pit reporter from 2003 to 2004, and although we didn’t get together until 2005, the foundations were laid on the tracks.
The Monaco Grand Prix. What’s so special about it for you?
It’s the ultimate challenge for a driver. To drive a grand prix car around that track is just mental. The level of concentration required is massive. You’re not aware of anything else other than the car on that racetrack. It’s a great feeling to be so in the zone. You’re just focused on what’s around the corner and how close you can get to the barrier. Nothing is in your mind at all apart from driving.
There’s nothing in Formula 1 bigger than the Monaco Grand Prix. It’s the single event, because… it’s the glamour. It’s the dream. It’s the fast cars, the women, the money, the casino—all of those cliché things—that’s Monaco. That’s Formula 1.
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