David
Coulthard

David Coulthard was born on 27 March 1971 in Twynholm, Scotland. Motor sport ran in the family: his father raced karts and became Scottish national champion, and his grandfather took part in the Monte Carlo Rally. Coulthard received his first kart for his eleventh birthday and went on to win several local karting championships, including the Scottish Kart Championship and the Scottish Junior Kart Championship. He moved into car racing in 1989 and won the Formula Ford 1600 Junior championship. In 1991 he took five wins in British Formula 3, finishing second to Rubens Barrichello, and won both the Macau Grand Prix and the Masters of Formula Three. After ninth place in Formula 3000 in 1992, he finished third in the series in 1993. He also worked as a Williams test driver in 1993 and 1994.

When Ayrton Senna was killed at the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix, Williams needed a second driver, and Coulthard made his debut in Spain. He finished second in Portugal and ended the season eighth in the championship. In 1995 he took pole position in Portugal and won his first Grand Prix there, finishing the year third overall.

He joined McLaren for 1996 and stayed until 2004. In 1997 he won the season opener in Australia and later the Italian Grand Prix, and in 1998 he won at San Marino. Five more victories came in 1999 and 2000, including the British Grand Prix in both years. In 2001 he won in Brazil and Austria and finished runner-up in the championship, 58 points behind Michael Schumacher, his best championship position. He won at Monaco in 2002 and in Australia in 2003. He left McLaren at the end of 2004 after a season in which he finished tenth without a podium.

Coulthard moved to Red Bull in 2005. In 2006 he finished third at Monaco, the team's first podium. In 2008 he took another third place in Canada, announced before the British Grand Prix that he would retire at the end of the year, and scored his last points with seventh in Singapore. His final race, in Brazil, ended in a collision. In total he started 246 races, with 13 wins, 12 pole positions and 62 podiums.

After Formula One he stayed with Red Bull as a testing and development consultant and raced for Mücke Motorsport in the DTM from 2010 to 2012. At the Race of Champions he was runner-up in the Drivers' Cup in 2008 and won it in 2014 and 2018. He worked as a pundit and commentator for the BBC and, from 2016, for Channel 4. In 2019 he was elected president of the British Racing Drivers' Club.

Source: Wikipedia, “David Coulthard”. Text licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.