David Coulthard will be on the starting grid in Australia in March, signing a one year deal with Red Bull Racing for 2005. "After speaking to team owner Dietrich Mateschitz I was impressed by Red Bull Racing's plans for the future," Coulthard tells the Austrian news agency APA. "This is definitely an exciting new team." Autosport reports Coulthard has agreed to a performance-based contract, meaning he will be paid according to his on-track results. Coulthard will earn less $4-million in base salary but has the potential to pick up $180,000 for every championship point, according to the report. Applied to last year's total, he would have earned $4.3-million. However, Mark Webber only scored seven points with the R5 chassis which will form the basis for Red Bull's 2005 car. That would translate into $1.26-million. The news comes on the heels of a successful test by the 33 year old last week in Jerez, Spain. According to the Independent newspaper, Coulthard impressed team officials with his "calm and incisive approach". After initially rejecting the veteran driver, Red Bull owner Dietrich Mateschitz admitted that it would be foolish not to consider someone with his driving pedigree. Managing director David Pitchforth went one step further, calling it a "no brainer" to hire an experienced driver such as Coulthard. Coulthard, the second winningest active driver in Formula One, was left without a ride after McLaren replaced him with Juan Pablo Montoya. He had been widely expected to join Jaguar Racing before Ford decided to sell the Formula One team. In 11 seasons Coulthard has won 13 races but has not tasted victory since the 2003 Australian Grand Prix. His best finish last season was fourth at Hockenheim. A second driver is expected to be confirmed in the new year, however, some reports say Christian Klien will be back for a second season. F3000 champion Vittantonio Liuzzi has also tested with the team. The Italian has already ruled out suggestions of sharing the second seat with Klien next season.
I've never been a big fan, and he does take his share of hits around here, but after thinking about it a little I get the feeling that once he's gone DC will be missed more than we realize. Like him or not, he does serve as one of F1's more recognizeable figures in a sport of increasingly vanilla drivers.
This is an interesting match up. I hope that next year's season will be successfuly enough to sign on for an additional year with Red Bull and make improvements to help start the climb out of the gutter, so to speak. My heart strings are tied to the Red Bull team, naturally. Its an uphill climb requiring a lot of money and even more dedication to making a successful team going forward from this point.
Some things never change... Looks like next year will be his year! I expect an in depth interview to follow soon in which he will claim to be leaner and fitter than ever and there will be no more Mr Nice Guy from him. Yaaawn....
LOL!! DC is a class act, but also a has-been who never-really-was. Red Bull will be able to benefit from his experience, since they are sort of a new team, but yeah, definitely more of the same.
Anthony, as you mentioned previously: All DC does with his announcement is give you a clue when it is time to do your X-mas shopping. My bigger question is how long he can string out the Red Bull ride? I bet he already has some dirty pictures of Mateschiez.
My thoughts on DC: I think that getting DC will be good for red bull. He has a lot of experience working with top teams throughout and may help Jaguar/Red Bull raise its game. Mclaren are very disciplined in their approach and red Bull can learn from this. Coulthard is good at setting up cars and this would benefit the team a lot. Also he is one of the best in the PR side. The weak link has always been qualifying speed. 2003 really exposed this weakness and 2004 was no better. Coulthard needs to do somethink to improve here. From a race standpoint I think he is very good - pretty good at overtaking, driving style is economical on the gas and brakes (and not because he is slow ). Generally he always progresses forward in the race. Meaning qualifies in 10th and finishes in 6th. Some of his wins were pretty awesome too.... I think the problem maybe that although he is only 32 years old, he seems to have lost a good chunk of his original speed. For example in 1998, he wasnt that far off from hakkinen who is one of the best single lap specialists of all time. But the gap to Raikkonen is quite a lot now... Drivers lose speed with age and this may be hitting Coulthard a lot earlier than some of the other drivers. In fact DC may be using all of his experience rather than outright speed to keep up with Raikkonen. There are several examples of this in the past - E.g. in 1984 Prost was way quicker than Lauda but the latter used his experience to pull ahead. I was reading a critique by the journo Peter Windsor who mentioned that DC is losing some time on corner entry because he is unwilling to let the car slide a bit as Raikonnen would. When the car slides, Dc is quick to correct and this loses him time. Raikkonen allows some sliding to occur and deals with it so gains fractionally on every corner.
I think he is going to do better than in 2004, or at least try harder, since he is getting paid by points... It's very expensive to maintain his lifestyle. Cheers.
Or perhaps age. A racedrivers worse enemy is fear, you loose a lot of agressiveness and may not be willing to take chances or push yourself and the car that extra bit that may be necessary for a place on the podium. /Peter
You are starting to sound like DC! Yeah, next year will be his year! He finished 10th in the Championship in 2004. He will do worse in 2005. He is not the worst performing driver in F1, but I just can't stand the way he always seems to feel the need to talk himself up and then not deliver. No other drivers seem to do this - expecially Michael. Here is DC's latest piece of self-dillusion: David, please just shut up and drive!
We got the maestro himself, Juan-Pablo "Big-Mouth" Montoya. If you listen to him, he is the World Champion, he has just had a lot of bad luck... /Peter
