19/03/2006
NEWS STORY
If our Red Bull Racing boys thought they were on for a nice afternoon in the warm heat of Malaysia watching the Grand Prix on their garage plasma screens, they soon found out different… You'd think a team owned by a drinks manufacturer would be able to deal with hot weather, but strangely enough this was the first time that neither car made it to the flag since last year's Hungarian Grand Prix, the other notoriously hot race on the calendar.
Just one lap into the race, Christian Klien made his first pit stop following an incident with Kimi Raikkönen and had to be pushed into the garage for repairs. Soon after Klien re-joined the race, his team-mate DC, who had made an excellent start, came in to the pits and was taken into the garage with a hydraulics failure. Christian then returned to the garage with a suspension problem. Coulthard was forced to retire, while Klien made it back out on track, before also retiring with a similar hydraulics problem.
David Coulthard: "I lost hydraulic pressure in the car, which meant I had no power assistance going into the chicane. With that alone your afternoon's going to be difficult, but as the gearbox is controlled by the hydraulics as well, I became stuck in sixth gear. Once you lose the ability to change gear you've no chance, so unfortunately we had to retire the car. The start of the race was good, I got up behind Michael, I had a long strategy, felt reasonably comfortable, was quick in areas where you could overtake and slow in the bits where you were following people, and I think we could have had easy points today. We're still learning a lot about this car. We lost a lot of winter testing because of the cooling issues, but basically I think the car has good pace, I'm just trying to find a set up that's suitable for me. I feel a lot more confident in the car this weekend so the future is encouraging – the car is definitely capable of scoring points in Grands Prix."
Christian Klien: "The start was okay, I was in a good place, then in Turn four there were three cars (me and the two McLarens) going into it. I was right on the inside, already over the kerbs. I couldn't go further to the right and mine and Kimi's cars touched. I broke my front suspension and that was basically it. I went to the pits and we tried to fix it just to get some more mileage on the car. We went out once more, but then we had a hydraulics failure and that was the end of the race. It's very disappointing, if you look at the race pace I think we could have been right up there."
Christian Horner, Sporting Director: "It's disappointing to have both cars retire here. Christian got involved in an incident on the first lap with Kimi Raikkönen, which caused him to pit for some suspension repairs, but we elected to put him back out in order to gather more information and learn a little bit more about RB2. Unfortunately David had a hydraulics failure. After Christian had completed several more laps, a similar problem occurred on his car. The one positive thing to take away from the race is that the performance and pace of both cars looked very competitive. Christian was doing good times with heavy fuel and David also looked competitive. It's a great shame, but we'll fight back at the next one."