David Coulthard - Old and Wise

[TwistedArmco]

Er sorry to buck the trend of complimentary comments to DC, but I think he picked the right moment to retire. He's missed out on so many wins that he deserved in the past, but this season, he's collided with Massa, Button, Glock, Sato, Vettel and Barrichello. That's a collision every two races on average. His spatial awareness has never been worse.

I feel I have to at least partially stand up for DC in this case. In regards to the Massa and Button collisions, I thought Massa and JB went for gaps that really weren't there in their desperation to move up the grid. Lets not forget about the Red Bull's very poor cockpit visibility. I think that's been corrected in recent races after DC's run of collisions but the mirrors are/were next to useless on that car. In those cases though, I'm always amazed at how the driver's engineer never gets on the radio to the them, to inform them that somebody's behind them chewing away on their rear wing, trying to get past. That aside, in Australia and Bahrain, I definately felt that DC had lost out due to over-optimistic attempts to overtake him. But the lack of visibility would have been an issue too...probably .

Ok, first off, DC was adamant in both cases that he could see them and knew where they were. Secondly, slightly over-optomistic they were, but surely if DC was a wise old head, he'd give them acres of room, especially in JB's case. In both incidents, he closed the door very strongly where Massa's move was fair enough, and where Jenson's move (highly optomistic) could have been overlapped. Jense way overran his braking point as you saw. In short, he's starting to drive like an old miser, unwilling to give people room. This is why he should retire. In fairness to DC, Canada is an indicator that the fire is still there, but in normal, unchaotic races, Webber has trashed DC.

[MansellRed5]

Ok, first off, DC was adamant in both cases that he could see them and knew where they were. Secondly, slightly over-optomistic they were, but surely if DC was a wise old head, he'd give them acres of room, especially in JB's case. In both incidents, he closed the door very strongly where Massa's move was fair enough, and where Jenson's move (highly optomistic) could have been overlapped. Jense way overran his braking point as you saw. In short, he's starting to drive like an old miser, unwilling to give people room. This is why he should retire. In fairness to DC, Canada is an indicator that the fire is still there, but in normal, unchaotic races, Webber has trashed DC.

Maybe ol' DC's needing glasses in his old age to improve his spatial awareness :sad:.

I wouldn't say his unwillingness to give people room is a new thing, remember Argentina'98 when he had a gearshift problem on lap five, and closed the door on Schumi? DC was adamant that he was in front and thus, Michael should've conceeded the corner. Perhaps he thought the same thing in both of the aforementioned incidents?

Despite your counter-arguments, I still stand by my original statement .

[TwistedArmco]

Maybe ol' DC's needing glasses in his old age to improve his spatial awareness :sad:.

I wouldn't say his unwillingness to give people room is a new thing, remember Argentina'98 when he had a gearshift problem on lap five, and closed the door on Schumi? DC was adamant that he was in front and thus, Michael should've conceeded the corner. Perhaps he thought the same thing in both of the aforementioned incidents?

Despite your counter-arguments, I still stand by my original statement .

Well, I didn't expect you to change your views.

But DC closes the door so much, and yet overtakes from so deep (or tries to, as in Sutil, his nth collision this year) which to me is a massive hypocrasy. Even Nakajima, Rosberg and Sutil, the most ragged-edge drivers out there this year, don't do that. I mean Sutil had perfect right to close the door, given that DC was about 50 miles behind him before the corner, and Nakajima is usually crashing into people from people from behind, but gives people racing room.

I can understand DC being a hard-arsed racer back in the day, but he's fighting for what? 12th, on a regular basis? He should be clamer and take people out/collide with people less..

Let's do a count of F1 heads:
Massa, Australia
Button, Bahrain (was a 50/50)
Glock, Spain
Sato, Spain (another 50/50)
Vettel, Britain
Piquet, Europe (not DC's fault at all)
Sutil, Europe (100% DC's fault)