Coulthard: 'I just won't face up to retirement'

THERE IS, explains David Coulthard, no easy–motoring setting for a Formula One driver. He's either skirting along that famous ragged edge, or he's not in the game at all. That's why, he explains patiently before I've had a chance to ask, he has yet to draw up any plans for his dotage. "I never think about calling it a day," he says.

"I love what I do and besides, you can't plan your retirement from Formula One because once you start thinking like that you have to give up. You can't do this unless

It is no surprise that Coulthard chooses to bring up the issue of how much longer he will remain in Formula One. At 37, he is positively geriatric when compared to most of the boy racers he is set to line up alongside at the Circuit de Catalunya in Barcelona this afternoon, and experience has taught him that sooner or later the subject will rear its head. While he lives up to his reputation as one of the deeper thinkers on the grid, he can't hide the fact that the perpetual preoccupation with his age irks him.

In fact, Coulthard has plenty of reasons to be irked quite a lot just now. As soon as the season got under way, Ferrari's Felipe Massa T-boned him trying to overtake on an inappropriate bend in Australia and then refused to accept any share of the responsibility. "I did the same thing to Alex (Wurz] last year, but I admitted it and apologised," said Coulthard after the incident. "He had better. If he doesn't, I'll knock three colours of shit out of the little bastard." You can take the boy out of Twynholm…

That was just the start of a trying month for the veteran Scot. Previously a driver with an uncanny ability to steer clear of trouble, he has swapped more than his fair share of paint during the season's first three races. Erstwhile buddy Jenson Button was the latest driver to incur his wrath when the two indulged in some mechanical bump and grind in Bahrain; again, the Englishman's inability to say sorry raised the Scot's hackles. And then there was the freak crash in practice in Malaysia when Coulthard suffered a second major suspension failure in two weekends – that's three crashes in three races, and none of them his fault.

At least the Red Bull driver is back on familiar ground this afternoon. Fourteen years ago, Coulthard's Formula One odyssey started at this circuit when the Williams test driver made his F1 debut, being handed Ayrton Senna's drive after the Brazilian's fatal crash at Imola. Although the Spanish Grand Prix doesn't number among the 13 victories he has racked up in the intervening years, he has still been consistently competitive at the track, coming second three times in a row with McLaren and managing a respectable fifth place last year after starting ninth on the grid.

Yet Coulthard has always been notable for his professionalism, for trying to wring the very best out of every car he's ever driven, and he's not about to let up now. Not only has his slow start left him four points behind team-mate Mark Webber, who he has comfortably beaten for both of the past two seasons – virtually every F1 driver sees their team-mate as their real competition – but the 12-month extension to his three-year contract with Red Bull expires at the end of the season. He may be loath to contemplate retirement, but the ever-present possibility that he might be retired is the elephant in the room. He knows that he faces a constant challenge to prove his worth, but his determination to prevail is not in doubt.

"When I left McLaren I had already had a successful career but I was still motivated and hungry. I find testing very rewarding and demanding, and get a great deal of satisfaction from helping the team develop. I also get to experience life on the edge. I derive great pleasure from that feeling, and from the thrill of starting a grand prix on a Sunday morning. For me, it provides an adrenaline rush which is addictive. I need to get that feeling; I have to have that feeling. It's not a life you give up lightly."

That is one explanation for why Coulthard continues to race, continues to give it his all. He certainly doesn't do it for the cash: he has made enough money from racing to keep him in luxury for the rest of his life, and the canny Monaco-based investor has also made a second fortune out of hotels in the French tax haven and back in Britain. He doesn't do it for the baubles either because he has already stacked up an array of honours that place him among the sport's elite: not only is he fourth on the all-time points-scorer list having won 13 grands prix, but in his 230-odd races he has amassed more points than any other British driver.

Nor is there any need to prove himself to his peers. Asked to look back over his 14 years in F1 and pick a defining moment, he chooses his second win in Monaco. "Looking back, that was a very significant point in my career because I realised that opinion was divided as to whether I was a good driver before then," he says. "But even those people who could say that winning Monaco the first time was a fluke had to concede that no-one wins Monaco twice unless they're a very good driver. If I had to pull out my trump card then it would be that second win at Monaco, which is the defining moment in my career."

Coulthard once described himself as "the Tim Henman of Formula One", the nearly-man whose lack of a world title forever marks him, in much the same way that Colin Montgomerie will always be defined by his failure to win a major. Yet it wasn't said with rancour or regrets; the boy from Dumfriesshire knows he has done everything possible to maximise his talent, even down to becoming bulimic for two years as a teenager to keep his weight down to the nine stone needed to win at karting.

"I think I've fulfilled my talent, made the most of the opportunities that were given to me," he says. "I was born into a good family in a wee corner of Scotland and have ended up travelling into every corner of the world, experiencing things I'd never have seen had I not been a racing driver. I didn't need to have had this journey to be happy, and in fact sometimes I think my journey would have been easier had I not done this (gone into motorsport]. My brother has stayed at home and he runs the family (haulage] business, and he's very happy, but that life would not have been for me. My life isn't better or worse, it's just different."

That assessment wouldn't have surprised touring cars racer David Leslie, one of the greats of Scottish motorsport who acted as a mentor to the young driver. It was the Longtown man who helped Coulthard make the transition from karts to cars over two years in the late eighties. He once told me that he couldn't say for sure that Coulthard was the most talented young driver he ever worked with but that he was unquestionably the most committed.

The death of his friend Leslie in a light airplane crash less than a month ago was a savage blow for Coulthard after the loss of rallying stars Colin McRae in a helicopter crash and Richard Burns to cancer. With motorbike legend Steve Hislop also perishing in a helicopter crash, it has brought back uncomfortable memories flooding back of the day in May 2000 when Coulthard almost shared their fate. Fresh from his win at Silverstone. he was flying to Nice in his friend David Murray's Learjet en route to the Spanish grand prix when the plane was forced to crash land at Lyon. Coulthard survived but the two pilots didn't.

"I know what the final moments of an airplane crash are like. I know that terrible feeling that you are going down and that there's nothing you can do about it; I know how they (Leslie, McRae and Hislop] would have felt. For me the end result was a couple of broken ribs, so life went on. There's nothing I can say (about the guys who died] other than that I'm really saddened.

"Each of those losses was shocking because they were guys that I knew well and because each was so unexpected. If you're involved in a dangerous sport there's an acceptance that you could lose your life and I know how to rationalise that, but for it to happen in these circumstances is very difficult to accept. The only consolation is that, knowing them all as I did, that they lived a lot in their short lives."

The same can undoubtedly be said of Coulthard himself. And, as he plans to demonstrate this afternoon, he intends to make the most of his good fortune.