Skip to main content

Coulthard - elite level but only occasionally great

“I never won the world championship, but there were moments where I was, to be arrogant, world-class against world-class performers,” David Coulthard explained to The Athletic.

“What they were was consistently world-class. And I dipped in and out of it. My performances were like that, so that’s why the result books reflect the drivers at that time. Mika was consistently quick. Michael was consistently quick. They got the world championships.”


Coulthard has explained even further. He recognised during his career the days on which he was untouchable and the steps he took to try to bottle that lightning. He engaged sports psychologists to try to work out what went so well on those days and to be able to reproduce it. But he admits he couldn't.


There are of course a number of reasons for it all needing to come together and in the midst is the frailty of the human condition. A human that needs to be performing within a tenth of a second at all times. Even if only driving to a target lap time. That is what the greats can do and what even the bloody excellent occasionally can't.


Part of this comes down to the manner of competing too. You take every advantage you can get - that is what the greats also do. In !997 Coulthard had two race wins to Hakkinen's one. And that one win was gifted to him by McLaren ordering Coulthard to let him by as part of the run out in the final Grand Prix. An advantage Hakkinen took. The very next race in Australia 1998 there was the first corner pact with the fast but fragile cars - the cars would hold station after the first corner. Hakkinen was leading but a hearing mix-up caused him to come into the pits unnecessarily and putting Coulthard into the lead. A lead he gave back when it was explained it had been a mix-up. An advantage Coulthard relinquished.


Coulthard probably did the "right" thing in both instances. But by giving up those advantages that he had earned by racing hard and not making mistakes, he validated any pattern there was in the team. But all of that makes up the person he was and is.


The greats build a team around them so that even when they disobey team orders it's as much a team problem as it is their own.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Alpine : Plus Ca Change ?

Regarding:- How can Alpine turn around its plummeting F1 performance? When though has the Enstone team been different? When it was Benetton? When it was Renault first time around I guess. Since then it's been making up the numbers really. Where has the statement been that it really, really, wants a tilt at the title? The closest statement was the big money signing of Ricciardo and the whole project around him as their race winning, franchise driver around whom they were going to build a future. But he bailed and that programme whithered away back into making up the numbers culminating with a return to being a customer team. Renault need to sell up as their heart has not really been in F1 since Crashgate. They could still buy title sponsorship if they want to maintain Alpine branding in F1 and the team can still have its collection of showy investors as it tootles around a closed shop league.
Post a Comment
Read more

Horner Sacked!

Well slap my thigh and call me Gladys.  Check the calendar, nope yesterday wasn't the 31st March. Red Bull Racing have sacked Christian Horner. Seriously?!?!  This feels like one of those football sackings when a top team is struggling and whaddya gonna do?  It's "quicker" to replace the man at the top than the entire squad.  But F1 is an engineering formula, there aren't three races to get your "new manager bounce" and bag some points. I guess the problem is that Horner didn't demonstrate he could change the management philosophy he had been responsible for.  The relentless focus on Verstappen has resulted in a car that only he can get performance out of and perhaps a team that simply doesn't know any other way to build the platform. I don't think it's about losing Newey - or if it is then Horner is well out of there and RB GmbH is incredibly short-termist.  Newey, Marshall and Wheatley were going to leave one day.  Similarly it can'...
Post a Comment
Read more

Ignorance in 2025 is bliss for 2026?

Regarding Mercedes plight at understanding its car:- Why it took so long for Mercedes to expose failed F1 car upgrade The lack of correlation between the Mercedes simulator tools and the track has been apparent in the ground effect era.  In 2022 they persisted with designs in which the car was an unstable nightmare that had performance (according to the simulations) that they just needed to "unlock" (get the set-up window right for).  The problem was that the optimal set-up window lasted less than a track session.  Get it right for FP1 and it would be nowhere for FP2, and so on. It is surprising it has taken so long for them to fix this, but then, equally it seems to be a pattern up and down the grid.   RBR hit the GE era running with a car with the most usable window, of all.  Ferrari's F1-75 had a narrower set-up window within which it could outrun the RB18 .    The following year, you'd think that Ferrari would widen their set-up window a...
Post a Comment
Read more