DAVID COULTHARD’S TOP 10 F1 DRIVES

10 1995 PORTUGUESE GP

ESTORIL

WILLIAMS FW17 (1ST)

“Braveheart Coulthard leaves Damon’s title bid in tatters,” reckoned Autosport after the 1995 Portuguese Grand Prix, but the man himself doesn’t recall any debate about helping his championship-fighting Williams team-mate Hill. “It was just, get out and race,” he says.

And he did that to devastating effect. Coulthard took his third pole of 1995, set fastest lap and took his first F1 victory by 7.2 seconds from Michael Schumacher.

Schumacher chased hard early on, both Coulthard and the Benetton being on three-stop strategies to Hill’s two: “Michael was behind me and I thought, ‘If he doesn’t slow down, I can’t keep this pace’ – it was exhausting.”

But Schumacher couldn’t keep up and DC started to “breathe normally and find my comfort zone”.

Hill found himself in second after Schumacher made his third stop. Coulthard never got the call to allow his team-mate through, which was just as well as Schumacher found a way past Hill on lap 62 of 71. DC was long gone.

9 2000 SPANISH GP

BARCELONA

McLAREN MP4-15 (2ND)

This entry is less about the race itself and more about the context in which Coulthard finished second to team-mate Mika Hakkinen. Just days before the race, he had survived a plane crash in which both pilots had been killed.

“The tragedy of the pilots losing their lives was the overriding discussion and thought leading up to the GP, with some people questioning whether I should race,” recalls Coulthard. “But I spoke to one of the pilots’ fathers and he was absolutely clear that the show goes on