F1
As well as winning the Monaco Grand Prix twice, David Coulthard scored Red Bull Racing's first-ever podium there. Who better to give us the lowdown on the iconic race?
David Coulthard made his Formula One debut 25 years ago at the 1994 Spanish Grand Prix. After test driving for 1993 constructors' champions Williams, the F3 champ was given a race seat alongside Damon Hill following the death of Ayrton Senna at Imola.
Eight races in, Coulthard bagged his first podium at the 1994 Portuguese Grand Prix before notching his maiden win at the same event the following year. After a successful nine-year stint with McLaren in which he scored two Monaco wins, the Scottish driver joined Red Bull Racing in 2005 for their inaugural season in Formula One.
As the man responsible for Red Bull Racing's first-ever podium at the 2006 Monaco Grand Prix, Coulthard knows all about the magic of Monte Carlo. Below, he discusses his successes at Monaco, as well as his years at the pinnacle of motorsport.
What was your first experience of Monaco as a driver like?
I was aware of Monaco when I was growing up, and when I was 14 my father highlighted it as a potential location to live if I ever made it as an F1 driver. In his mind, I was always going to make it, but in my own mind it seemed a bit pie-in-the-sky!
I did actually live there before I drove the circuit! Learning Monaco in a Grand Prix car is quite an eye-opener, because it’s all coming at you quite quickly. I think at the end of my first practice for the 1995 race, I was certainly well down in the lower teens in a car that was a Grand Prix-winning car. By the Saturday, I eventually qualified third, so I managed to make some progress.
In that race, I got involved in a first-corner shunt, squeezed between Gerhard Berger and Jean Alesi, and then had to restart the race in the spare car, which was set up for Damon [Hill]. The team had to modify it on the grid and I ran third until a gearbox failure quite early on in the race, so I didn’t finish my first Monaco Grand Prix.
It's a significant track in the history of the sport because of the achievements of some of the sport’s multiple world champions there and the challenges it throws up.
What are your most memorable Monaco moments?
I won 2000 and I won in 2002, but I remember the 2001 race because I was in pole position. When I selected first gear for the formation lap, it switched the engine off because there was a software glitch, and I started at the back and eventually finished fifth.
That was frustrating because you do all the hard work through Thursday and Saturday, and then a technical problem will ruin your chances. There were a lot more technical problems back then. You would be leading a race and the engine would blow, stuff like that, but that was part of F1 in those times.
To win on a track, in a place where you live, is fantastic. I'm still as impressed by the history of the Monaco Grand Prix as a fan, irrespective of the fact that I have been lucky enough to drive for teams that have given me a car capable of winning there.
What are your memories of scoring Red Bull Racing’s first-ever podium in 2006?
It was special for a number of reasons, not just because it represented the team’s first podium, and again at a track I had gone well at in the past, but also because I knew the streets and we were able to take the opportunity, have reliability, and bring the car home in third.
I remember Christian Horner jumping into the pool in the Red Bull Energy Station, but yeah, I only achieved two podiums with Red Bull Racing, but I have the Monaco trophy in my apartment in Monaco – and I only have three with me there.
I have the Spanish Grand Prix trophy, from when I finished second a week after the plane crash; the Monaco trophy for finishing third with Red Bull; and the Lorenzo Bandini trophy, which I won early in my career and which I feel belongs in Monaco. Funnily enough, all the winning trophies are not with me, they're up in Scotland!
What's your favourite part of the Monaco circuit?
Crossing the start/finish straight, because it means you've survived another lap. Coming out of the last corner, the Antony Noghès corner, which is an awkward, off-camber, slow, 90-degree turn, you breathe a sigh of relief as you go into the straight, which isn’t actually straight at all, and then you reset, head into Sainte-Dévote and hang on for another lap.
There are some pretty high-speed corners, like Tabac and through the swimming pool section, but it's fraught with danger wherever you are. You can crash anywhere around the streets of Monaco, so as a whole, it's an adrenaline rush on a major level.
What was it like becoming an F1 driver following the death of Ayrton Senna?
I went from sitting on a sofa watching F1 as a test driver, knowing the cars intimately and working with the likes of Alain Prost, Damon and Ayrton, to actually being in the race.
A race car is a race car and you learn on the job because nothing can prepare you for two hours racing around Monaco in a Grand Prix car from a physical point of view, and the mental stress of putting everything together. Everyone has to go through that process of reading the race and knowing which battles to fight.
How did it feel to achieve your first podium and win?
I got my first podium in Portugal in 1994 and won my first race in Portugal in 1995. That race was my 21st Grand Prix, which is not a lot of Grand Prix experience, but I had a very good car so you could argue, why did it take me that long?!
I’d had a few pole positions already before that win and had either made mistakes or had technical problems. For my first win, I had Damon Hill and Michael Schumacher beside me, and when you've beaten your team-mate and Michael, who was the driver of his generation, you can know that you've had a good day.
