David Coulthard: My 2007

The Red Bull Racer in his own words: David Coulthard’s very personal season review.

David on ... missed points:

Ultimately you measure success by the points scored and the results on track. The desire is to win Grands Prix and based on that, we obviously haven’t achieved as much as we’d have liked. But, that said, it was always going to be a road of discovery this year, as Adrian Newey came to understand what tools he had available to use at Red Bull. He was previously used to McLaren systems, which he’d been involved in creating, and when he came to Red Bull, he inherited a system that was already in place.

David on ... the evolution of the team:

There were a number of results that initially came out of Red Bull’s wind tunnel, which didn’t necessarily show the same results as those on the race track. The team needed to learn what the off-set was and, as the year’s progressed, we’ve understood that much better. Looking to next year and the development of next year’s car, this gives me a lot of confidence that we’ll be able to take the next step needed to get better results. In 2008 we’ll continue our relationship with Renault, which has worked very well, and we will continue to use Bridgestone tires. The team's looking good - it's grown and we’re getting to the point where we have the hands necessary to develop the car to be very competitive in Formula One.

David on ... the insights that 2007 brought:

The general trend of the year has been that Mark has generally been a bit quicker in qualifying and I’ve been a bit faster in races. We have had some problems with reliability and some incidents on track, but that’s Grand Prix racing. We’re in front of Honda and Toyota in the Constructors Championship - two major manufacturers who’ve been investing in F1 for a number of years, so we have to take some positives from that.

David on ... his performance in the year past:

I love Grand Prix racing, so I’ve really enjoyed having all the opportunities I’ve had this year to race on Sundays. Of course, there have been some frustrations with reliability, and I’ve made some mistakes on track, such as in Australia when I crashed into Alex Wurz, but, that said, I’m really pushing, and doing the best I can out on track to help the team move forward, using my experience from Williams and McLaren. The team’s growing; there are a lot of good people in Red Bull Racing and many employees who’ve come from other teams and moved up into higher roles within Red Bull. They’ve stepped up and grown into their new roles, so it’s an exciting time. That’s one of the things I love to see off-track – how you can bring hundreds of people together who work in harmony towards one common goal.