Third race for Coulthard's engine

July 29th, 2008

Third race for Coulthard’s engine

To make it even more difficult to keep the engine statistics up-to-date Red Bull team has decided to keep David Coulthard on the same Renault engine for the third race in a row in Hungary this weekend. Well on paper it is third race in a row but his British GP barely lasted a lap . Here are the reasons behind the unusual decision - Fabrice Lom, Renault, in charge of Red Bull engine supply:

“This is the first time we have taken this decision. First of all his V8 has not done too much running. Plus, having our two drivers out of synch on the engine cycle means that we won’t be putting all our eggs in the same basket. This decision will also help us in the second half of the season in terms of the logistical challenge. And finally, it means that David will not have to use the same engine in Spa and Monza, which are two of the toughest challenges on the calendar.”

In the early days of two race rule there were worries the teams may choose deliberately not to finish the race to be able to run with fresh engine in next one. It actually happened in 2005 when BAR retired both cars (Button and Sato) on the final lap of Australian GP and again in Australia in 2006 when Button stopped his smoking car meters from the finish line. Now we have a team choosing to use the same engine for third time .

Photo: Red Bull/GEPA

tags: Tags: 2005, 2006 Australian GP, BAR, David Coulthard, Honda, Hungarian GP, Jenson Button, Red Bull, Renault, Takuma Sato

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2 comments »

Comment by zblkhwk

July 30th, 2008 at 10:05 am

Doesn’t make sense to me. If they run 3 races on one engine, do they get an extra change later?

If they gave Coulthard a new engine, he would get a new one at Spa, then could use his one time exemption for Monza.

As far as I know, only Raikonen has used the exemption thus far, so I would guess that strategy would be a popular one as the season gets close to the end.

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Comment by Stew