GPBlog's Top 50 drivers in 50 days - #37 - David Coulthard
Coulthard celebrates winning the 2003 Australian GP, his final F1 race win
F1 News
Welcome back once again to GPBlog.com’s countdown to the Australian Grand Prix. We’re ticking off one driver in our top 50 every day until the first race of the season. You can catch up with yesterday’s piece on 1967 champion Denny Hulme here, but today we’re going to talk about David Coulthard.
More commonly known as DC and for his appearances on Channel 4’s coverage of F1, Coulthard was a fiercely quick driver, racing for Williams and McLaren in their peaks.
The Scot made his debut in difficult circumstances, replacing Ayrton Senna following the Brazilian’s death in 1994.
His first race was the Spanish Grand Prix of that year, and he was in and out of the car as Nigel Mansell made a few appearances.
After a contract tussle with McLaren, Coulthard stayed at Williams for 1995 and impressed, finishing on the podium on several occasions and taking his first victory at the Portuguese GP.
He got his move to McLaren the following season and had a more difficult year before bouncing back in 1997 and taking two victories, ending the season nine points ahead of teammate Mika Hakkinen.
McLaren has a better car in 1998 and he was in the championship hunt in the early stages but faded away as Hakkinen beat Michael Schumacher to the title. Coulthard won just one race as Hakkinen won eight.
The next season was more a story of bad luck than poor driving as he suffered mechanical retirements in four of the first seven races, with Hakkinen again taking the title.
Unfortunately for Coulthard, his best chances at a title were already gone as Schumacher and Ferrari’s dominance began, although he was well in the hunt in 2000 before four consecutive Schumacher wins gave him the first of five titles.
Coulthard got the better for Hakkinen in 2001, winning twice and scoring eight other podiums to finish a career-best second in the standings behind Schumacher.
He got a second career win at Monaco in 2002 before winning the first race of the 2003 season, but he was already trailing his exciting teammate Kimi Raikkonen, so he opted to jump ship to the new Red Bull team.
Coulthard was Red Bull’s main driver for the first four years they ran in F1, scoring podium finishes in Monaco and finally Canada, retiring from the sport at the end of 2008.
Coulthard’s retirement paved the way for Sebastian Vettel to join Red Bull, and we all know how that ended!
The 13-time Grand Prix winner still has a place in the top ten of the most race starts in F1 history with 246, although Vettel is set to knock him off P10 this season.
Coulthard certainly had the ability to become a world champion, perhaps he didn’t have the luck or the ruthless streak needed to take the ultimate prize, but he is known as a fantastic competitor.