MAY 1, 2001

Newey backs Coulthard

ADRIAN NEWEY has admitted McLaren's electronics were at fault in David Coulthard's startline stall at Barcelona although he revealed Coulthard's actions had caused the system some problems.

Coulthard had the blame planted upon him by Ron Dennis immediately after the race but the team boss backed down after data showed otherwise.

Newey revealed that Coulthard had partially caused the incident but admitted the system did not perform satisfactorily.

"We know not only from David's point of view but also with launch control starts, something happened which we hadn't properly envisaged," said Newey.

"David did something slightly differently, but the system should have coped with it and there is no point in allocating blame."

McLaren had a difficult day, and it was made worse when Mika Hakkinen's apparently certain victory was stolen by a car failure that Newey deemed unsolvable.

"It came when we heard the rev-limiter," said Newey after Hakkinen ground to a halt on the final lap. "The clutch was slipping."

He said that the failure was "possibly" traction control related, but added: "We just don't know at the moment and we may never know because it got so hot there was a lot of damage and a small fire.