David on 2001, traction control & the tyre war.

David Coulthard has said he feels good about the forthcoming season and that the bottom line is he still has to beat Michael (Schumacher) and Mika (Hakkinen).

The Scot had this to say to BBC Sport:

Q. How do you feel about this season?

A. "I feel good, but I'm very aware of the fact that if McLaren and Ferrari are still the two main teams - and none of us know whether we will be or whether someone else will take a step up - the bottom line is I still need to beat Michael and Mika."

"There's no indication that they're getting any slower, so the job is still going to be as difficult as it always has been."

"I still believe that I'm improving as a driver, and the results will either prove or disprove that. But I think last year I generally improved as the year went on, and I feel pretty good with the work I've done in the winter. We'll wait and see."

Q. Did you do anything different this winter to prepare for the season?

A. "All the things I'm doing in my life are to allow me to focus on driving the car. Things that don't need to happen or are a distraction have hopefully been removed.

"I've trained more. I've worked more closely with the build of the new car."

"I don't know how to quantify what difference that will make, but I've just generally been more involved in the whole process, and been more confident in saying when I wanted to be in the car and when I didn't want to be in the car."

"Will it make a difference? I hope so. But I can't honestly say whether it will or not."

"It's still the same quick guys you have to beat and you have to be on top of your form to beat them."

"It's not as if I'm trying to climb the mountain to prove to myself if I can do that or not. What I'm trying to do is stay balanced on top of the mountain. If I can get to a consistent level then the rest will follow."

Q. Mika Hakkinen and Michael Schumacher prefer to spend the winter away from the car. You prefer to spend it doing more testing. Why?

A. "It's a very individual thing. I don't think it really matters. It's whatever you personally feel."

"I choose to drive in December, because I believe it's an influential part of the season. Things that you develop in November will be on the new car in January and will be there in Melbourne. That's your job."

"It's no good turning up, racing the car, and getting out and saying it's no good."

"You've got to develop the thing. And then you can genuinely say we haven't taken a bigger step forward as we needed to, or whatever."

"I chose not to do the first test in January, because I felt fatigued, I felt like I needed a bit of time off. So I didn't drive for four weeks, and then came back and tested in Jerez at the end of January."

"After last year I realised I didn't need to do every test. Previous to that I thought: 'I've got to be in the car every time they drive.'"

"But after the accident I realised that I didn't test for six weeks, and every race I just got stronger, because I think I was fresher, mentally."

Q. Is that going to be built into the programme after Melbourne?

"Yes. We'll use Alex (Wurz, McLaren's new test driver) a lot, maybe another test driver as well, to make sure that Mika and I only do the key tests."

"There will be a lot of key tests because of tyre development, but you need time off as well."

Q. Is it too early to say whether the MP4-16 is a car that suits your driving style?

"The bottom line is whatever the car, you know that Mika is going to be able to drive it quickly."

"Generally over the last couple of years I've had fewer 'difficult' tracks. It's responding to changes, it's running reliably."

"We can't ask for much more than that. Then it all comes down to whether it's good enough or not, and we won't know until Melbourne."

Q. When you heard how much McLaren's technical director, Adrian Newey, was pushing the boat out with the design, were you concerned about reliability in the early races?

A. "Not so much, because in December we were running with the same back end [as the new car uses]. The engine and gearbox have already been tested."

"The most difficult thing to get reliable on a car is the engine, the gearbox and the electronics, but all of those have been running since December. So we've had no real problems."

Q. What do you think about traction control coming in at the fifth race?

A. "I did only one day's testing with the gizmos in Jerez, in the second week of December. The rest of the time it has been Alex's turn to work with it. I'm not sure whether Mika's done any running with it. I doubt it."

"We've kind of developed it and put it to one side. A lot of that traction control stuff they had sitting on the shelf from '93."

"I'm sure you can always improve it with new software and new technology, but the basics of how much wheelslip you want, front to rear, is the same. There's an optimum for any tyre, and you develop that using the telemetry and the driver."

Q. Are you enjoying the tyre war, or does it just make your life harder?

A. "I think it's great for F1 to have the tyre war, but it's a pain in the backside for the drivers in a way because you then lose the ability to compare every car on the grid."

"Jaguar could win a race because they have the right tyres (Michelin). That would be a fantastic thing for the sport."

"But in terms of perception that would be seen as them stepping up and being better than McLaren and Ferrari (who use Bridgestone), when it might actually be that they were just better than Williams and Benetton (the other Michelin top Michelin teams) on that day."

"So what you have now is two formulas; you have Formula Bridgestone and Formula Michelin."

"Tyres are such an influential part of the car. You can spend a year finding 0.2-0.3secs in aerodynamics and mechanical adjustments. If you find that much during a year, you're doing well."

"But you can put better tyres on and gain a second a lap. It's incredible. It throws F1 open completely, and it will mean more teams winning races, but it makes it more difficult."

"If you're just trying to win a championship, the best thing that can happen is that you have the least amount of teams and drivers to try to beat."

Q. Are you expecting any shock results?

A. "There will be, definitely. The weather is going to play a part. When there are wet weather conditions, it might be that the Michelins are much better. There will be times when the conditions will suit the tyres."

Q. Your race engineer Pat Fry is moving to a roving role this year. Why is that?

A. "Pat's playing a central role, but he's going to be overseeing my car. It's much more balanced."

"Previously Adrian gravitated towards Mika's car and didn't feel that he could take an overview, because it's hard to think about two cars. Pat will naturally oversee what's happening on my car."

"The more clever people you have on your side, it's got to be better. I think the changes in the way the engineering line-up is done will strengthen my side."

"It's still going to be difficult to beat the other guys, but it should help."

Q. Do you think in the past you were suffering from a lack of information going from driver-to-driver?

"McLaren is very open. But, naturally in the heat of doing the job, there are certain things when you are focusing on a car as an engineer that you won't put into the system until the end of the session, and it might have been critical to a qualifying position or something."

"If your engineer is thinking about finding out what the other car is doing all the time then he's not thinking about your car."

"So that's where I believe it will be strengthened now, because there was never really someone there before to float around without having to worry about tyre pressures, fuel levels, how many laps we've got left, what time's left."

"So that frees Pat up. And Pat's a clever guy; he's really grown into that role. McLaren needed a person in that role and he's the perfect person for that role."

"He's following up things that happen. I don't know his official title, but he is basically like a floating engineer or a chief engineer."

"He'll be on the pit wall and overseeing what's happening between the cars, but primarily during the race weekend overseeing what's happening on my car, but that's only because Adrian works on the other side."

"It balances things up a little bit in terms of the amount of people I have working on my car."

Q. Do you feel that you've proved to yourself that you can do the job when you've got the support from the team?

"Not just because it was me, but I tell you I think that Magny-Cours victory was one of the hardest fought victories of last year."

"Forget it was me in the car. You've got someone running round in third place. He overtakes the second-placed guy (Rubens Barrichello), which normally only happens in pit stops."

"He then overtakes someone who's accepted as being a very aggressive racing driver and very hungry to win (Michael Schumacher), and drives off into the distance and wins the Grand Prix."

"I thought that was a stunning victory! I know it doesn't sit with people's perceptions of me in F1, because I haven't done it consistently, but forget it was me."

"Look at that one race - if that was Michael who'd won, it would have been classic Schumacher. I thought it was the business!"

Q. How important is Melbourne going to be in defining the season?

"There are only 10 points for winning at every race, but it is important to get a bit of momentum."

"Even if you don't win the race, although obviously that's the goal, you've got the first step on the ladder."

"Look at last year - in Melbourne we didn't finish, and then in Brazil I got disqualified. So straight away you're potentially 20 points down on whoever won those races. You've got to score in every race - that's got to be your goal."