David Coulthard has hailed a breakthrough in Istanbul after he got to the chequered flag for the first time this season with no failures, collisions or crashes.
Writing in his column on the ITV F1 website, he says: “I feel like I got a monkey off my back in Turkey.”
He also talks about his on-track duel with McLaren’s Heikki Kovalainen, the superb aerodynamic balance he feels the RB4 now has and how he thinks drivers should take responsibility for the accidents they cause.
Here’s an excerpt:
David Coulthard column 19/05/08
For the first time this year I had a trouble-free weekend with no collisions or car breakages, and I made it to the final stage of qualifying after missing the cut at the past two events.
My main focus was converting the pace I had through the practice sessions into a top-10 grid position and establishing a good platform for the race.
In Barcelona we tripped ourselves up by trying to do Q1 on the harder prime tyres, so this time I decided to play it safe and use two sets of the option tyres.
In hindsight, we could have got through to Q3 without using up all our options and qualified higher than 10th, which would then have given me a better chance of scoring points in the race — but it wasn’t worth running the risk of being knocked out early again. Read full article here…
Meanwhile, while on the site, you can also pop along and read a Q&A with Red Bull’s chief technical officer Adrian Newey.
Great things were predicted from the former eminence grise of McLaren’s design department – and did not materialise. Can he manage to rediscover his race-winning fu? Certainly results this season so far are more encouraging, and Newey says that he feels “reasonably satisfied” with progress in a tight midfield.
You can read the interview in full here >>