Matt Bishop: The forgotten F1 season when Coulthard trounced Häkkinen

I remember the moment with a clarity that surprises me still, not because it was especially dramatic by the standards of Formula 1 paddocks, which thrive on confrontation as vineyards thrive on heatwaves, but because it was so unvarnished. So travel back with me to Thursday, April 23, 1998, and to the Imola paddock, cramped and slightly frayed at the edges, humming with espresso machines and intrigue. I had recently written an editor’s leader for the magazine that I was then editing, suggesting, with what I had thought at the time had been a cool, rational logic, that McLaren ought to back Mika Häkkinen unequivocally if it wanted to maximise its chances of winning the 1998 F1 drivers’ world championship. David Coulthard, I argued, should play a supporting role. It was not a personal slight, but a strategic thesis. Or so I told myself.

David did not see it that way — and, when he found me, he did not preface his indignation with pleasantries. He tore a strip off me in a manner that was as eloquent as it was ferocious, the impact of his ire sharpened by its being expressed not in a private conversation but in a public dressing-down, delivered within earshot of anyone who cared to listen, and there were quite a few of those. “You’re a British journalist,” he said. “I’m a British driver. I don’t expect special treatment, but I do expect fair treatment. Yet, even though the season is only three races old, you’ve already decided that your magazine, which is a British magazine, should favour Mika, who isn’t a British driver last time I looked.”

Mika was one of the most devastatingly rapid drivers whom any of us had ever seen

There was no petulance in it, no petard-hoisting theatricality. It was simply a driver telling a journalist that he was wrong, and that he did not appreciate being cast as a wingman when he believed himself capable of being far more than that. I listened. I absorbed. I made the point that the nationality of a driver should be immaterial to a journalist whose objective is to be, well, objective. “As I say, I’m not asking for special treatment; I’m asking for fair treatment,” he repeated. Then he walked away, leaving behind him the aroma of righteous anger mixed with expensive aftershave.

With the benefit of hindsight, 28 years later, I can say three things without fear of contradiction. First, David was entitled to be cross. No F1 driver worth his salt wants to be told that he should abate his ambitions for another’s. Second, if our argument served to rev him up ahead of an important race weekend, I am glad of that; and perhaps it did, because three days later he won the San Marino Grand Prix. Third, I was probably right about 1998. Häkkinen went on to outclass Coulthard that year, as he would again in 1999 and 2000, winning F1 drivers’ world championships in the first two of those seasons and missing out on a hat-trick by a pretty slender margin in the third.

Mika, at his incandescent best, was one of the most devastatingly rapid drivers whom any of us had ever seen, a man who could access a level of speed that sometimes felt almost metaphysical. For David to be beaten by him — any time, any place, anywhere — was therefore no disgrace. For David to be beaten by him at McLaren at the turn of the millennium, at which time Häkkinen was clearly team principal Ron Dennis’s and technical director Adrian Newey’s favourite, was simply a fact of life.

And yet facts, in F1, have a habit of being selectively remembered — which brings me, by a slightly circuitous route, to 2001, a year now old enough to have acquired a quarter of a century’s patina of nostalgia, and a season that in my view has been oddly misfiled in the collective memory. It is celebrated, if it is celebrated at all, as the year in which Michael Schumacher strolled to his fourth F1 drivers’ world championship in a Ferrari that was by some margin the class of the field. Nine wins from 17 grands prix tell their own story. But the F2001 was not merely fast; it was robust, it was exquisitely developed, and it was driven by a man operating at the absolute zenith of his powers. Schumacher did not so much win that world title as colonise it.

Behind him, the picture was more interesting than lazy recollection allows. Häkkinen, a double F1 world champion by then, won just twice, at Silverstone and Indianapolis, and he spent much of the season wrestling not only with misfortune but also with a creeping ennui that would lead him to step away from F1 altogether. Coulthard, by contrast, produced what was, by any reasonable metric, the finest season of his career. He won twice, in Brazil and Austria. He took pole positions at Imola and Monaco. He stood on 10 podiums. He finished second in the F1 drivers’ world championship, ahead of Rubens Barrichello in the other Ferrari and also ahead, decisively, of his own illustrious McLaren team-mate.

Moreover, those bare statistics, impressive though they are, do not capture the texture of what David achieved that year. Take Brazil, for instance. Interlagos, famous for its anti-clockwise sweep and its propensity for staging chaos, has a way of exposing a driver’s resourcefulness. On a hot and sunny Saturday, Coulthard qualified only fifth, but Sunday’s race was punctuated by rain, even a thunderstorm, shunts, and strategic curveballs. Häkkinen stalled at the start, which mishap ended his run before it had even begun. Forty-eight laps later Schumacher, who was now leading, half-spun his Ferrari on the greasy entry to Turn 5, Descida do Lago. He got it going again, but second-placed Coulthard was now within striking distance. By lap 50 David was on Michael’s tail. As they approached Turn 1, the Senna S, ahead of them was Tarso Marques’ sluggish Minardi, ready to be lapped. Coulthard wasted no time, no time at all, for he hurled his McLaren past both cars into a lead that he would never lose. It was a victory born of intelligence, restraint, and, when it mattered, audacious opportunism.

Austria was different, although, as in Brazil, Coulthard qualified unimpressively: seventh. But race day dawned dry, warm, and grippy, and he made a fast start, moving up to fifth on lap one. The race for the lead then developed into a battle between Schumacher and Juan Pablo Montoya, whose Williams-BMW was superfast on the straights, and in the end those two hard chargers tangled, dropping to sixth and seventh. Now Barrichello was leading for Ferrari, followed by Jos Verstappen, second for Arrows, and Coulthard, third for McLaren. Soon, as expected, Verstappen dropped back, promoting Coulthard to second. But behind him Schumacher was flying, and by lap 35 he had caught Coulthard. But pass him he could not.

Ten laps later came a round of pitstops, and Coulthard played them perfectly. Rubens stopped first, allowing David to take the lead. Then Michael also stopped. DC stayed on track for three more laps, on which he left no margin whatsoever. It was during that short, intense, blitzkrieg period that he carved the race’s fastest lap, and his impeccably timed burst of pace allowed him to emerge from his lap-48 pitstop in the lead — albeit only a second ahead of the two Ferraris, Barrichello just ahead of Schumacher. No-one was surprised when Ferrari boss Jean Todt instructed Rubens to let Michael pass him — “Rubens, let Michael through for the sake of the championship” — which he duly did, albeit on the 71st and final lap, by which time Coulthard was celebrating a cannily managed victory.

Those were DC’s 2001 wins. Then there were his 2001 poles. Imola, the scene of his and my disagreement three years before, provided another neat riposte when he put his McLaren on the pole there, threading together a lap of exquisite precision around a circuit that brooks no error. Qualifying at Monaco has always been the ultimate examination of a driver’s bravery and finesse, and Coulthard’s pole there was a masterclass in commitment, his McLaren dancing on the edge of adhesion through Sainte-Dévote, Casino Square, Tabac, and the Swimming Pool, mere millimetres from the barriers, and mere milliseconds from perfection.

Coulthard’s 10 podium finishes in 17 grands prix in 2001 constitute a return that would flatter many an F1 world champion. Häkkinen stood on only three podiums that year. Yes, bad luck played its part, for Mika suffered six DNFs and one DNS. F1 has never pretended to be a meritocracy untainted by mechanical or dramatic whim. But good luck, like good form, has a habit of following those who work hard and think harder. Or, to put it another way, you make your own luck. Sometimes that is not the case, but often it is. Over the course of a season, patterns tend to emerge. In 2001 the pattern was clear: in identical machinery Coulthard was the stronger performer.