“I don’t want anyone to think I am a pushover.”
That’s the message from V8 Supercars star Fabian Coulthard, who believes some people think he is willing to cede positions in races in an all-consuming effort to keep harvesting Championship points.
The 31-year old Kiwi lies third in the V8 Supercars Championship after a consistent ITM 500 Auckland, where a lack of qualifying pace restricted him to 7-10-11-9 finishes over the four Anzac weekend races.
While the positive of that is Coulthard took home a strong points haul, avoiding big hits and damage to his Brad Jones Racing Lockwood Holden Commodore VF despite the closely packed field, any suggestion he was driving conservatively clearly rankled.
“I just feel that people think I am a pushover, which I am certainly not,” Coulthard told v8supercars.com.au.
“Every time people speak about it, they speak about it in a way that suggests ‘oh Fabian is here and he is going to let you go because he is thinking about the bigger picture’.
“I am not thinking about the bigger picture, I am not being smart about the way I drive. If there is an opportunity to pass the car in front of me then I am going to pass it.”
Coulthard is conscious the ‘pushover’ perception may have been heightened by Race Eight at the Winton 400 where Erebus Motorsport’s Lee Holdsworth tracked him down and passed him for the team’s historic first win with only laps to go.
Coulthard was quizzed in the press conference that day about whether he could have defended any harder, a suggestion he dismissed then and continues to reject now.
“Lee had far better tyre quality than I had… I wouldn’t say I was a pushover and prepared to give up that position because I wasn’t, but you can only fight for so long and I had done the most I could with what I had,” Coulthard said.
Coulthard also makes the point that he progressed forward from his qualifying position in every single race at Pukekohe.
“We started 14th and finished ninth on Sunday and any position I could have got I got, basically. I had a good battle there with (Jack Daniel’s Nissan teammates) Todd and Rick Kelly and James Courtney (Holden Racing Team). Regardless of whether I am having a good day or bad day I am still going to get every single point I can get.”
While the pushover perception rankles, Coulthard’s more pressing issue is qualifying pace on the Dunlop hard tyre, which was exposed again as a major issue at Pukekohe. It meant, after weeks of intense build-up, he could not race at the front of the field on home turf along with his compatriots Shane van Gisbergen (Tekno Autosports VIP Pet Foods Commodore) and Scott McLaughlin (Volvo Polestar Racing Volvo S60).
“You only have to be a whisker away and you are in the mid-pack and it is obviously so hard to pass around Pukekohe,” Coulthard said. “I think we were just the wrong side of a few tenths here and there. Race pace was pretty good, but we just couldn’t do much with it.
“For us I think it is qualifying and just getting the most out of the tyre and working the tyre enough in the first part of qualifying when it is brand new. That’s really where we struggled… just getting the new tyre gain more than anything.”
Coulthard struck similar hard tyre qualifying issues at the Championship-opening Clipsal 500, but was able to race through into the top five positions on the more open track. While the next Championship event, the Perth 400, is all Dunlop soft tyres, Coulthard clearly needs the issue resolved.
“We do a lot of other races on the hard tyre, so my preference is to get that sorted and try and get on top of that and try and find the reasons why we are not getting that gain,” he said.
BJR conducted a debrief last Thursday at its Albury shop and Coulthard confirmed there were some potential solutions developed. But no test is planned for the team until June. The next event using hard tyres is the June 20-22 Sky City Triple Crown in Darwin, followed by the all-hard tyre Castrol Townsville 500 in July.
Complicating the search for speed is the reduced amount of practice and qualifying at events this year. That has helped contribute to unpredictable and even more intense racing in 2014, something Coulthard welcomes.
“I think it is good to see different winners at different events. It keeps it interesting,” he said. “I think that is what the New Generation car is about, but also I think the formats have mixed it up a lot.”
