Monaco: Coulthard hits out at naive BAR

By Phil Huff (23/05/2004)
May 23 2004

David Coulthard branded the Lucky Strike BAR Honda team as inexperienced and naive following Takuma Sato's engine failure in today's Monaco Grand Prix.

The resulting smoke screen left drivers blinded, with Giancarlo Fisichella crashing hard into the rear of David Coulthard's McLaren.

"Sato's engine was smoking on the parade lap and it is too risky to go around Monaco like that," moaned David Coulthard. "The professional thing would be not to race and it is just an example that BAR are a young team.

"When Sato's engine blew up I couldn't see anything in front of me because of the smoke," continued the Scot, before conceding that Fisichella was "perhaps going a bit too fast."

Still seething, he reiterated "Smoke was coming from Sato's car already on the parade lap," before informing us that he was "sure the engineers could have seen on the telemetry that eventually the engine would blow up."

It's worth remembering that it was David Coulthard that stayed out at Monaco in 1999, spilling oil out of his car for about 50 laps before it finally seized, and again in 2002 before some pit-to-car telemetry solved the problem.

"I'm really disappointed and upset as I love this race and would have enjoyed battling it out with the other guys."

Given McLaren's current reliability and pace problems, it seems unlikely that Coulthard could have been 'battling it out' with anyone.