OCTOBER 11, 2003

McLaren sacrifices Coulthard for Raikkonen

Kimi Raikkonen dented his remote World Championship hopes on Saturday morning when he crashed his McLaren-Mercedes at the second corner at Suzuka. The car was damaged enough to make the team to decide to give Kimi David Coulthard's car and leave the Scotsman with no running in the second session on Saturday morning. Coulthard will take over the spare car when the warm-up begins before the final qualifying session but he is going to be seriously handicapped because there is no time available to do much work on the set-up.

Raikkonen's damaged car will be repaired and will serve as the spare for the rest of the weekend.