I had a chance to sit down with former Formula One driver David Coulthard for dinner and got to ask him a few questions about F1, his career, and F1 in the United States. He’s currently employed as a Formula One pundit for the BBC network and reports in the commentary box with fellow ex-F1’ers Martin Brundle and Eddie Jordan. When he’s not on the tele, he’s behind the wheel of a DTM car driving a 2008 C-class race car for the Mucke Motorsports team. Interestingly, his current primary personal sponsor is Red Bull, just as it was during his last stint with F1. Even though Red Bull and Mercedes-Benz fight hard against each other in the F1 circus, they work together for Coulthard in the DTM series.
He looks forward to Austin, and hopes it makes a better impression on Americans than the tire-fiasco race at Indianapolis did.
Does F1 need to come to America?
DC: It does in order to call itself a true world championship. To genuinely have a world championship, it should be represented by as many countries as possible. I was very excited when it came back to Indianapolis and we had a great turnout, but then we shot ourselves in the foot with that tire fiasco. To be honest, it had nothing to do with Indianapolis and the tires, it was all politics. I remember I was on the radio saying “I’ll start the race, I’ll start the race.”
What’s up these Tilke designed race tracks?
DC: He’s a touring car racer himself, he’s raced at the Nürburgring, so you’d think someone like Herman who’s been around one of the most scariest challenging race tracks in the world come up with something a little more exciting.
Where did he get it right?
DC: Turkey got it right, turn 8, it’s bumpy with multiple apexes, if you get the first one wrong, you have to bail out and you lose time. Malaysia is the first of the new tracks, and they have a few sweeping corners.
What do you think the formula for a good venue or spectacle is?
DC: You need overtaking and fast corners. The fast corners give the drivers a ride of their lives, and if the drivers speak positively about it, then the fans will be positive about it and want to check it out.
They need it to be a drivers track. If you have a drivers track, people will talk about it, and want to go there. Like I went to Watkins Glen earlier this year. I had heard of Watkins Glen, but had never been there, so I drove the track and I thought it was the scariest place I had ever driven, but that’s what makes you feel alive in a race car, isn’t it.
You need corners where drivers feel that they’re really pushing the limits.
What’s it like to drive an F1 car? Is it similar to something that mere mortals can experience?
DC: From when I was in karting at 11 years old to when I won in Monaco, my vision of how I looked at the corner, of what I wanted to achieve with the car, what I did with the engineers to get the right balance is all the same. But what is not the same, is that Grand Prix cars really are an uncomfortable place to be, but what allows you to pass over that discomfort is just the absolute focus on this high stakes game. I can not put myself back into that pressure zone again. I can still drive competitively in other formulas, but for me F1 is unique, and whether Indy or Nascar is the same, I don’t know because I’ve never competed in those series. I do know that DTM is not like that. I can drive and I can feel like I’m pushing the car and I’m taking myself to the limit, but that limit is no where near the limit of an F1 car.
It’s just incredible, and when I look at them now and I try to remember what it was like when I used to do that, I can only remember a little bit of it, because it was such a higher level of concentration than I ever use in every day life, that I’m actually quite amazed I used to do it.
But there’s nothing I’ve experienced in life like driving a Grand Prix car around Monaco or through Eau Rouge flat. It’s just incredible. When it’s really set up well, it will brake as late as you want, it will turn as fast as you want, it will do everything, it will absolutely deliver on your expectations. I don’t know the last time you drove something where you just said, “My God, this thing just doesn’t have a flaw,” and it only happened a few times in my Grand Prix career but when it happened it was fantastic.
Do you like technology like DRS (drag reduction system) and KERS (kinetic energy recovery system)?
DC: I would love for the pure wheel to wheel racing, but to have that, you need all the cars to be the same, and that’s not what Formula 1 is. It’ll always be a battle, on the human level, between the engineers and the mechanics.
What’s your favorite era of F1 cars?
DC: I loved the late-80’s early-90’s, wide slicks, wide cars, V8’s, V10’s and V12’s, all different. I remember when I was a kid, in 1990 standing down at Stowe corner at Silverstone during warm-up on a Sunday morning and as was more often then not the case at Silverstone, there was morning mist, and out in that morning mist there was the unmistakable noise of a V12 Ferrari, and it came down through Stowe, and went around, and it probably wasn’t even going that fast, but I remember a shiver going down my spine, and it’s fantastic when you can identify a car like that.
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