03/07/2005
NEWS STORY
There were some glum faces in the Red Bull Racing garage this afternoon, when Christian Klien's French Grand Prix ended just seconds after it had begun. Suffering a loss of fuel pressure in his car, the 22-year-old was forced to pull off the track and out of the race at Turn four, lap two. Meanwhile, David Coulthard set out to salvage what he could from his starting position of 15th on the grid. Delivering a determined drive, the Scot moved up five places through the field to finish in tenth position overall.
David Coulthard: Bugger. I lost a lot of time in traffic during the race and could never make the time up. Let's just look to Silverstone from here.
Christian Klien: It's a massive disappointment. I had a fuel pressure problem in the first lap and there was nothing to do, but pull over. The whole weekend was not on my side; I had a crash and then qualified sixteenth. I thought it might be hard to get near to the front runners from that far back on the grid, but I didn't expect something like this on the first lap.
Christian Horner, Sporting Director: We'll have to look into the failure on Christian's car in a bit more detail, as we don't have the feedback on that yet. David drove a very aggressive race, but got stuck behind traffic, which he eventually managed to clear. After that, his pace was competitive, especially during the second half of the race. He set some good lap times and repeated the performance he showed in the free practice. I think the thing that hurt us most here was starting so far back on the grid and that's definitely something we need to work on. We've discovered a small brake problem yesterday, which was partly responsible for that, and it's something we'll need to sort out before Silverstone next weekend.
Dave Prigg, Cosworth: We're pleased to see the TJ2005 12 series engine complete it's first cycle with David. Unfortunately, Christian had a fuel system problem at the start of the race, which will be fully investigated before the next event at Silverstone.