Should David Coulthard have been Williams’ world champion?

Thirty years ago, in September 1995, David Coulthard scored the first of his eventual 13 grand prix wins at only his 21st attempt, and what turned out to be his only victory in a Williams. There could – should – have been more in the benchmark team of the decade. But after just one full season the Scot, then 24, walked away from arguably the best car he’d ever drive (the FW17 is certainly still his personal favourite), and turned his back on a chance to go head-to-head with Damon Hill for the 1996 world title. Who knows how that might have turned out?

Then again, Coulthard had good reason. In fact, you could argue he was left with little choice, as he switched to a McLaren team winless for two years and still with plenty of miles to go before it recovered its old world championship-contending form.

Today, at 54, ‘DC’ as he is universally known remains modest to a fault about his time in F1 and, from a perspective as one of motor racing’s best and most eloquent TV pundits, looks back with endearing honesty and wry amusement on most of his adventures. But that day at Estoril for the Portuguese GP on September 24, 1995, he not only left Hill in his dust but also beat Michael Schumacher’s equally Renault-powered Benetton from pole position on the same three-stop strategy, fully on merit. We’ve said it before about DC: if only he could have summoned such days more often.

Coulthard’s recollections of 1990s Williams are told through a prism of warm affection, but they also shed light on Frank Williams’ single-minded, often brutal approach to team management – and a fiercely independent spirit that ultimately contributed to the team’s undoing during the BMW-powered era the following decade. It’s a fall from which this grandee team has never fully recovered.

“Frank gave me my opportunity to be a test driver,” says DC. “But in the first year of testing [1993] I was never officially a tester, I was never paid. I’m not saying this to be disrespectful or ungrateful, but in those days you were the crash-test dummy. When they developed carbon-fibre suspension they’d put it on a rig, but the main rig was the test track and you went out until it failed. And it never fails at a hairpin at 80kph, it fails at 300kph on a straight… I think the reason why they didn’t make me official was because Renault or Elf wanted [Emmanuel] Collard or [Jean-Christophe ‘Jules’] Boullion. Frank didn’t want them. I tested wearing my own race suit and helmet, I didn’t even wear the official gear at that point. So I felt like I wasn’t fully invited to the party.”

How Coulthard was pitched headlong into a prime race seat, as a substitute for one of the greatest racing drivers in history, carries echoes of Jackie Oliver replacing Jim Clark at Lotus in 1968. DC was an official test driver for Williams in 1994, on a salary of £20,000, when Ayrton Senna was killed at Imola. He was called up for the Spanish GP, but the drive wasn’t his: he’d share it with Nigel Mansell, who returned from IndyCar for a quartet of (typically headline-grabbing) appearances, the last of which in Adelaide he won in the wake of Schumacher’s title-deciding professional foul on Hill.

“Money hadn’t crossed my mind. Frank said I’d get £5000 a race”

DC chuckles at his own naivety back then, but hindsight leaves him with questions. “When Frank told me I would be the race driver in Barcelona, I said, ‘Thank you very much, Mr Williams.’ He said, ‘Aren’t you going to ask how much you are being paid?’ It hadn’t crossed my mind. My motivation wasn’t money. He said I’d get £5000 per race.”

At his second race in Montréal he scored his first F1 points for fifth. “There was a tax in Canada that I had to pay: CAN$10,000, which was more than £5000. I asked Frank would he cover the difference – and he said no! So I effectively paid to do the 1994 Canadian GP! Now Nigel I believe was paid several hundred thousand pounds per race, so I did eight races and earned £40k, minus the tax in Canada. At the time it didn’t matter, but when I look back now I wonder why? It was just kind of weird.”

For 1995, Coulthard became a full-time Williams grand prix driver as Mansell made his ill-starred (and literally ill-fitting) move to McLaren. “I went to sign a two-year contract for 1995/96, but as the contract was coming out Frank said, ‘I’ve changed my mind, I only want to do a one-year deal.’ Frank was an amazing man, but sometimes he’d nitpick. So instead of signing for two years, we changed the contract in his office, I signed for 1995 and then went to Woking the same day and signed a two-year contract for 1996/97 with McLaren.”

Can you blame him? Ron Dennis had been calling, making it clear he not only wanted Coulthard but could offer him a degree of security distinctly lacking in Frank’s attitude. DC would stay at McLaren for nine years.

During 1995, while Hill’s title aspirations against the superior Schumacher/Benetton combo floundered, DC performed consistently – for a rookie. Along with the Portuguese GP win, he scored seven other podiums, took five poles – four consecutively – and led 11 races. Sure, there were mistakes, including an embarrassing collision with the pitwall in his final drive for the team in Adelaide. But by then his future at McLaren was assured.

“David was undoubtedly a talented driver, but he did not seem to have the grit and determination of a Mansell or a Hill,” says Williams co-founder Patrick Head. “I remember being rather disappointed at Hockenheim after Damon went off at the end of the first lap [when a driveshaft failure locked his rear wheels] and DC could not keep up with Schumacher, when Damon had been dominant.”

Jacques Villeneuve, Indianapolis 500 winner and IndyCar champion in 1995, replaced Coulthard for 1996. Head recalls Frank Williams “submitting” to pressure from Bernie Ecclestone to take on Villeneuve, but that was only after Frank had failed to stop DC leaving.

“Frank Williams was an amazing man but sometimes he’d nitpick”

“When Frank wanted me to stay I couldn’t,” DC explains. “He challenged my McLaren contract and the only way to verify that he didn’t have the right to my services was to go to the Contract Recognition Board. Halfway through 1995 I walk in to the CRB’s Geneva office and sit on the McLaren side of the table with people I don’t know. On the other side is Frank with his lawyer. Williams had a multi-year technical contract with me, but not a multi-year race contract. The CRB decides McLaren’s contract is the dominant one. I then get in a plane with Frank and fly to the next GP. How weird is that? Frank said, ‘I’m not going to hold this against you, David, and I thoroughly enjoy being cross-examined by George Carman QC…’ I talk about this with the benefit of a University of Life education. Back then I was still the village boy clueless to the world of contracts.”

But Coulthard is also at pains to stress the other side of Frank Williams. To finance his climb to F1, Coulthard and his family had racked up personal debt, which he was determined to pay back as quickly as possible. “I owed £320,000 which was secured by my father against his [haulage] company, so in fairness to Frank, with a 1995 contract for £500,000, I asked him for an advance of £320k. He asked, ‘Why?’ I said, ‘That’s what I owe and I would like to go into 1995 debt-free. OK, I’ll have no money, but at least I can be focused on being a grand prix driver.’ He wrote the cheque.”

At the first Melbourne grand prix in 1996, Villeneuve made his sensational F1 debut, soon won races and became world champion in ’97. But Coulthard has no regrets over the path he chose, especially as Adrian Newey followed to lead Mercedes-powered McLaren back to the sharp end and Williams lost its works Renault V10s at the end of 1997 – its last title year. “I’d grown up at Williams, I’m a great believer in serving your apprenticeship, so I never felt disrespected,” says DC. “But at McLaren you were treated like a professional and you were expected to act like one.”

Did Coulthard’s call to sign that McLaren deal lose him his best shot at winning a world championship? Probably. But hindsight’s a wonder. At the time, and in his racing boots, few drivers would have chosen differently.