{"id":354846,"date":"2025-08-18T18:59:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-18T18:59:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/354846\/"},"modified":"2025-08-18T18:59:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-18T18:59:11","slug":"he-was-5-seconds-faster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/354846\/","title":{"rendered":"‘He was 5 seconds faster!’"},"content":{"rendered":"

David Coulthard<\/a> drove for Red Bull Racing<\/a> between 2005 and 2008. The 54-year-old Brit recently shared an anecdote featuring Max Verstappen<\/a> in the starring role \u2014 with the four-time world champion completely outclassing him on track.<\/b>Coulthard <\/a>was asked the following question in an interview on the YouTube channel of Indo Sport: ”Do you think the average citizen would last 10 laps in the car physically?”<\/p>\n

The analyst was adamant in his answer: ”That’s being incredibly kind. And when I say the average person, that includes me nowadays.”<\/p>\n

After giving it some thought, the former F1<\/a> driver shared an anecdote to illustrate his point: ”Two years ago I did a filming for a little feature where we were at San Marino, and I went around the track in RB7 which would have been the Sebastian Vettel<\/a> V8 World Championship car.””I did one timed lap on a track that I’ve won the Grand Prix in 1998 or 1999. And then Max Verstappen<\/a> jumped in the car, and he did one flying lap and I was five seconds slower.”\"20250601-0202\"\/<\/p>\n

David Coulthard<\/p>\n

Despite this substantial difference in lap time, Coulthard was able to leave the circuit feeling good: ”I was actually reasonably happy with that because I hadn’t been around Imola<\/a> for more than a decade or more.”<\/p>\n

”I haven’t driven Grand Prix cars at that time. I’d done demonstrations and I do donuts but not pushing on a racetrack for well over a decade. So that just puts in perspective get what it is to be at the peak of your game.”<\/p>\n

F1 is \u2018addictively uncomfortable\u2019 according to Coulthard<\/p>\n

Coulthard continued by discussing the physical capabilities required by F1 drivers to perform: ”I’ve lost more than two inches in neck girth and that’s including the fact that I’ve got neck fat as a 54 year old. That’s just muscle.”<\/p>\n

”You look at the drivers, their necks come from their jaws and you know mine used to, and I’ve got quite a wide jaw.”<\/p>\n

Finally, he pointed out that F1 is an extreme sport: ”That\u2019s all because you’re supporting all that G and weight on your head. So it’s an extreme environment. It’s uncomfortable. It’s fantastically uncomfortable. It’s addictively uncomfortable when you’re in the space of trying to win Grand Prix.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"David Coulthard drove for Red Bull Racing between 2005 and 2008. The 54-year-old Brit recently shared an anecdote…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":354847,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4103],"tags":[4199,707,4200,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-354846","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-f1","8":"tag-f1","9":"tag-formula-1","10":"tag-formula1","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115051309722592275","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=354846"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354846\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/354847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=354846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=354846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=354846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}