Yesterday at 09:15
David Coulthard has recounted going head-to-head with Max
Verstappen in a title-winning Red Bull, where he found the Dutchman
was instantly five seconds a lap faster than him. The 13-time grand
prix winner was driving Sebastian Vettel's RB7 from 2011 at Imola,
and used the experience to illustrate the difference between an
"average person" and a racing driver. Appearing on the Indo Sport
podcast with Joe Malloy, previous comments were put to the
Scotsman, where he had said that, being generous, the average
citizen could last 10 laps in the car physically. "And that's being
incredibly kind," Coulthard replied. "And when I say the average
person, that includes me nowadays. "I, two years ago, did a filming
for a little feature where we were at Imola, San Marino, and I went
around the track in RB7, which would have been the Sebastian Vettel
V8 world championship car. "And I did one timed lap on a track that
I've won the Grand Prix in '98 or '99 [1998], and then Max jumped
in the car, Max Verstappen, and he did one flying lap, and I was
five seconds slower!" Living in a 'hostile environment' Coulthard
highlighted how the difference between him and Verstappen at the
time was akin to a current professional tennis player facing a
former player on court. "Now, I was actually reasonably happy with
that, because I hadn't been round Imola for, I don't know, more
than a decade or more, and I don't drive... I haven't driven grand
prix cars at that time for probably... I'd done demonstrations, and
I do doughnuts, but not pushing on a racetrack for well over a
decade," the former Williams, McLaren and Red Bull driver
explained. "So that just puts in perspective what it is to be at
the peak of your game. It would be like putting Bjorn Borg on court
with [Novak] Djokovic or something. Would he even win a point?
Highly unlikely. You know, the sport just moves on." He went on to
reveal the extent to which his neck, which suffers the burden of
the extreme amounts of G-force F1 cars produce, has changed since
retiring from the sport at the end of the 2008 season. "Physically,
I've lost more than two inches in neck girth, and that's including
the fact that I've got neck fat as a 54-year-old," Coulthard said.
"So that's just muscle. You look at the drivers, the necks come
from their jaws and mine used to, and I've got quite a wide jaw.
'Cause you're supporting all that G and weight on your head." But,
despite the discomfort, he admitted to how addictive life as an F1
driver was - no matter what pain the "hostile environment" caused.
"So it's an extreme environment," Coulthard stated. "It's
uncomfortable. It's fantastically uncomfortable. It's addictively
uncomfortable when you're in the space of trying to win grands
prix. "But see, when you retire, and you know that your time is
done - and I was lucky enough to retire on my own terms, rather
than being kicked out of the sport - I didn't do any exercise for a
year, and it was such a joy not to have neck pain, back pain, arm
pain, head hurting because of the vibrations, your ears ringing
because of the noise. "It's such a hostile environment," he added.
"But all of those things that I had become allergic to at the end
of my career, they were addictive at the time, because I was like,
'I can take more of this pain than my competitor. That pain is
going to make him stop. I'm not stopping'."
