FORMULA ONE: Coulthard pulls closer to leader Schumacher after victory
Posted By Terry CallahanMotorsports Editor, The Auto Channel
May 14, 2001
SPIELBERG, Austria, Sunday, May 13, 2001 - David Coulthard moved to within four points of World Championship leader Michael Schumacher after winning the Austrian Grand Prix in his West McLaren-Mercedes on May 13.
Schumacher finished second, taking over the spot in the final corner as his Ferrari teammate Rubens Barrichello followed team orders and slowed to let Schumacher pass.
After six of 17 rounds, Schumacher has 42 points and Coulthard 38. Barrichello is third in the standings with 18 points.
Coulthard started seventh but managed to work his way into the lead because McLaren's pit-stop strategy worked better than Ferrari's and because Schumacher and Juan Pablo Montoya tangled while fighting for the lead.
"From where I was on the grid, having qualified seventh," Coulthard said, "it was important to start with a heavy fuel load and then just to have the options open, depending on how the race went. I was able to lean the engine out early on after the first few laps and save quite a few laps of fuel as well as obviously with the safety car and that enabled us to go quite long."
This was the second race where driver aids such as traction control and launch control have been permitted, but the teams still have to perfect their systems. Four of the 22 starters - Heinz-Harald Frentzen, Jarno Trulli, Mika Hakkinen and Nick Heidfeld - were left stranded on the grid. Frentzen had a broken gearbox, but the others had problems with their launch-control systems.
Montoya grabbed the lead at the start ahead of his Williams-BMW teammate Ralf Schumacher. The launch-control system in the Ferrari of pole sitter Michael Schumacher didn't work perfectly, and he dropped to third. Because of the stranded cars, the Safety Car came out at the end of the first lap and stayed out until the end of Lap 3.
After Ralf Schumacher retired with brake problems, Michael Schumacher moved in to attack Montoya for the lead. Montoya was able to fend off him repeatedly, but both drivers slid off the track in Turn 2 on Lap 16.
Schumacher was on the outside and alongside Montoya as they headed into the turn. Montoya ran wide, and that forced Schumacher and himself off the track. Both got going again. Schumacher charged to third while Montoya climbed as high as sixth before coasting to a halt with hydraulic woes.
Barrichello took the lead on Lap 16 and held it until he made his one and only pit stop on Lap 47 of 71. That allowed Coulthard, who had worked his way up to second place, to become the new leader. Coulthard pitted three laps later and managed to get out ahead of Barrichello.
In the closing stages of the race, Coulthard, Barrichello and Schumacher ran in that order, and Schumacher later said that he did not have the speed to pass Barrichello. But the Ferrari team repeatedly asked Barrichello to move over so that Schumacher could gain the extra points by finishing second. In the final corner, just before the finish line, Barrichello ceded second place to Schumacher.
Rookie Kimi Raikkonen scored his first top-six finish since the first race of the season in his Red Bull Sauber-Petronas. He finished fourth, ahead of Oliver Panis' Lucky Strike BAR-Honda. A strategy of two pit stops rather than one, as the other teams chose, helped Jos Verstappen score the first point of the year for the Orange Arrows Asiatech by finishing sixth.
Coulthard did not spray the winner's champagne out of respect to Paul Morgan, who was killed in an aircraft accident the day before. Morgan was the co-founder of Ilmor Engineering along with Mario Illien. Ilmor works in conjunction with Mercedes-Benz to build the engines for McLaren. Ilmor also builds Indy Racing League engines for 2001 Indianapolis 500 pole winners Kelley Racing, Sam Schmidt Motorsports and Penske Racing.
Coulthard averaged 130.473 mph (209.977 km/h) to complete the 71-lap, 190.851-mile (307.146-km) race in one hour, 27 minutes and 45.927 seconds. His margin of victory was 2.191 seconds.
After the race, the BAR team filed a protest against Raikkonen, saying that Raikkonen had passed Luciano Burti when the yellow warning flags were being waved after Jenson Button spun off. After reviewing the evidence and videotapes, the race stewards rejected BAR's protest.
BAR has now filed an appeal, but that appeal will not be resolved for at least seven days. Therefore, until the appeal is heard, the results from fourth place down remain provisional. But the top three places are official.
QUOTEBOOK:
DAVID COULTHARD (West McLaren-Mercedes, winner): "I thought that if I was going to win it was going to be because cars getting tangled at the first corner. In my dream last night I came out in the lead. But I obviously didn't think that the Williams would be holding up the Ferraris initially. You could see from where I was sitting that it wasn't a question of if something happens between Michael and Juan Pablo, it was a question of when and where. It happened, and we benefited from that. With the strategy that we ran on fuel, and the fuel we saved by running lean, and when Ferrari pitted, I knew I had a real chance of winning."
MICHAEL SCHUMACHER (Ferrari, second) (About Ferrari team orders that allowed him to finish second): "David (Coulthard) is in a good position for the championship, and you have to think a little bit ahead and not say later 'actually we should have done that before.' So there is a lot of calculation, and there are very clever people involved who know what they are doing. I can't tell him (Barrichello) to slow down. It's not just me who is saying that, it is the philosophy of the whole team. Some people would want to do it that way; other people would do it in a different way. I feel that as long as we are not breaking the rules, then it is fair." (On the incident with Montoya that resulted in both drivers sliding off the track): "When you are on the outside and another car is on the inside, and it stays in the same position and it never allows you to get back on the circuit, then you have no chance. If Montoya had made the corner, I would have made the corner. I don't want to make a big fuss, but I believe he knew he was going off the circuit anyway and was trying to take me with him, and that's something I didn't like in particular. I will have a word with him."
RUBENS BARRICHELLO (Ferrari, third) (About his feelings when told by the team to move over and let teammate Schumacher take second place): "I cannot answer; it's something very much inside. Unfortunately, I cannot open my heart right now. I'm sorry. I have very little to say in the press conference, unfortunately. I still have to go down and talk to the team and clarify things. I just don't want to make any statement before I talk to the team." (On his race): "I didn't have a good start, just like Michael, but I felt it was one of my best races, running really hard. Unfortunately, Coulthard could go a little bit more than we did before pitting, and that worked for him. Otherwise I could have won. It was one of those races where I had a good feeling. I had a good car. I was really driving as fast as I could behind him."
KIMI RAIKKONEN (Red Bull Sauber-Petronas, fourth): "It has been a long wait since (the season opener in) Melbourne when I last scored points. I had a very good race, though there was some luck at the start. The car was good all the way through, and I could keep pushing hard. People are making a lot of fuss because I now have the same points (four) as Mika Hakkinen, but what matters to me is that as a team we had another great result today."
JOS VERSTAPPEN (Orange Arrows Asiatech, sixth): "The strategy to make two pit stops worked well for us as we could overtake at the beginning of the race. I think that is where we earned the point. I overtook a lot of people in the first corner, a couple more on the straight, and then two more after the safety car went in."
JUAN PABLO MONTOYA (Williams-BMW, retired Lap 42): "I made a good start, and during the race the car was behaving better and better. What happened with Michael (Schumacher) was just a racing incident. He braked quite late, and I braked quite late as well. I locked the rear tires and ran wide. At the end, we lost hydraulic pressure. I got an alarm two corners before, and I knew that was going to be it."
Text provided by Paul Kelly
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