Zoom A lucky escape for David Coulthard

Mark Webber and David Coulthard qualified ninth and tenth respectively for the Monaco Grand Prix. However, an accident at the end of the second round of qualifying saw David Coulthard's RB4 badly damaged and he was unable to take part in the top ten shootout.

Exiting the tunnel, Coulthard hit the brakes and the RB4 snapped to the right and hit the barriers. The car slid at high speed along the Armco shedding its right rear wheel and smashing the front left corner. Coulthard was unhurt.

Mark Webber
“We had a clear run with no problems. I was locking up quite a lot, but there was no particular sector of the lap that was worse than the others – we’ll just have to see how things go tomorrow. Seventy eight laps is a long race and there’s some uncertainly over the weather, so hopefully we can get some points.”

David Coulthard
“I was doing around 185kph when the incident happened, and I went into the wall quite hard. When I hit the brakes the car turned, I was going over a rise so it’s possible I locked the rear axle, but normally when that happens, you can just release the brake a little bit. We’ll check the car and see if anything was going wrong at the rear, as it turned very quickly."

"It’s normal for the rear to go light when you brake there, as we don’t have engine braking or anything like that, but you drive with that in mind, so I’m surprised what happened was so violent. But, we’ll get the car back, look at the data and then we’ll know.”

Christian Horner
"The main thing after such a nasty looking incident is that David is completely unharmed and the cars damage is relatively contained so, after a difficult weekend for him, which has included engine throttle problems on Thursday, a gearbox oil pressure issue this morning and a large accident in Q2, to still be tenth on the grid is positive for him! So I’m sure David will be fine in tomorrow’s race. Mark comfortably made it through the first two qualifying sessions and we think we’re reasonably placed for whatever the weather may throw at us tomorrow.”

Fabrice Lom, Renault
“Fortunately David is okay after his accident and still got through to Q3. The performance of the car on this track is very good. For the engine it’s very difficult at this track with the new rules because we have a lot of over-revs with no driver aids. It’s going to be very difficult to keep the revs down and the car on the ground.”

E.A. © CAPSIS International