JUNE 23, 2004

Coulthard and McLaren

David Coulthard will not be racing for McLaren next year but it is entirely possible that the Scotsman will stay with the team as its test and reserve driver. Coulthard wants to go on racing but there is little opportunity for him to find a competitive drive if Williams and Toyota do not snap him up. Thus far there has been no sign of that happening. A test drive with McLaren is a nice earning opportunity and Coulthard would be the perfect man to step in if one of the racing drivers was unable to compete. His long experience in F1 would also be very useful to McLaren's engineers as neither Kimi Raikkonen nor Juan Pablo Montoya are famous for their technical skills. If Coulthard is signed up by the Woking team it will be bad news for either Alexander Wurz or Pedro de la Rosa (or perhaps even both).

We have heard rumours that the team is also looking at offering rising star Gary Paffett a Formula 1 test drive but there is no confirmation of that at the moment.