David Coulthard names F1 driver who could have won multiple titles with Michael Schumacher’s work ethic

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David Coulthard raced alongside some legendary teammates during his Formula 1 career. He started out at Williams in 1994 before joining another iconic British team in McLaren.

Coulthard was a test driver at Grove when Ayrton Senna had his fatal accident at the San Marino Grand Prix. Frank Williams looked to him to partner Damon Hill for the remainder of the season.

Hill would lose out on the championship in bitterly controversial fashion after contact with Michael Schumacher at the season finale in Adelaide. Schumacher won the championship by one point after both drivers sustained terminal damage.

The following year, the German retained his title in far more comfortable fashion, with Hill second and Coulthard third. Hill finally toppled him in 1996, by which point his old teammate had moved to McLaren.

Coulthard was now alongside Mika Hakkinen, who would win back-to-back championships in 1998 and 1999. The Finn continued until the end of 2001, when a year off turned into permanent retirement.

Kimi Raikkonen succeeded him and came close to breaking up Schumacher’s run of five straight titles in 2003. After three years next to the so-called ‘Iceman’, Coulthard joined the nascent Red Bull project in 2005.

David Coulthard says Kimi Raikkonen could have been more successful in F1

Raikkonen spent an additional two seasons at McLaren before a switch to Ferrari. It was there he won his one and only title in 2007.

Lewis Hamilton and Fernando Alonso missed out by a single point as Raikkonen staged one of the greatest F1 comebacks. But he couldn’t sustain that level in 2008, and a couple of years later, he walked away from F1.

He returned in 2012 with Lotus, performing well enough to earn another chance at Ferrari. But Alonso and Sebastian Vettel beat him emphatically, limiting him to just one win in five years.

Raikkonen then dropped into the midfield with Sauber for three seasons before retiring for good. Speaking on the Red Flags podcast, Coulthard suggested he could have been far more successful with a better work ethic.

“He just had so much talent. But can you imagine? He won one world championship. If he had the work ethic of Michael, I think he would have won more.

“Michael was at the test track, he was at the factory. If you’re there standing over engineers and mechanics, they feel it, it empowers them. You are the fuel that helps drive them forward.

“So I say this: I stand by work ethic. It’s the difference between being a humble one-time world champion, or what he could have been – a multiple world champion.”

The big similarity Eddie Jordan sees between Michael Schumacher and Max Verstappen

Coulthard says Schumacher was so aggressive in wheel-to-wheel combat that he should have had ‘approach with caution’ written on his rear wing. He had a tendency to shut the door on his rivals unless they were completely alongside.

Inevitably, this has drawn comparisons with Max Verstappen. With the Dutchman set to seal a fourth title in the coming weeks, he’ll only be one shy of Schumacher’s record-breaking streak.

Verstappen’s epic win in Brazil was the 62nd of his Formula 1 career. He’s now within 30 of matching Schumacher, though he still needs 43 to tie Hamilton.

Eddie Jordan believes Verstappen is the modern-day Schumacher because he’s a ‘demon’ behind the wheel. The ‘horns grow’ through the helmet and he refuses to let anybody past in the midst of a title battle.