Coulthard warning over Red Bull progress

Red Bull Racing driver David Coulthard has warned that the team is unlikely to make a significant improvement in performance before the 2008 Formula One season.

The veteran Scot, who has 13 grand prix victories to his name, collected Red Bull’s first points of the season at last weekend’s Spanish Grand Prix after a strong drive to fifth place.

Coulthard believes the four-point haul is a step in the right direction, although a gearbox problem almost scuppered his charge in Barcelona, and he only just held off the charging Williams of Nico Rosberg as he nursed the RB3 home.

Poor reliability has robbed both Coulthard and team-mate Mark Webber of points at the opening three rounds of the season, and the 36-year-old believes it will be next year before the Adrian Newey-designed car reaches its maximum potential.

Coulthard told www.autosport.com: “It was good [the result in Spain]. It was not just that we got the points, but more so that we clearly demonstrated our performances are improving.

“It showed that we are now on the right track. We are moving forward and get confidence from that because inevitably people had started to have doubts.

“It is down to the hard work by a whole group of us, led by Adrian. Given time I knew we could achieve it.

“But the real step, I believe, will come when we go into the next year. Then, we will have the continuity of the engine, the design team and all the data that we did not have this year.”

The former Williams driver now turns his attention to next weekend’s Monaco Grand Prix, a circuit that has been the setting for some of his finest moments.

Coulthard won at the track for McLaren in 2000 and 2002, and he claimed Red Bull’s first ever podium in the principality 12 months ago.

One year on, Coulthard is optimistic he can turn in another strong showing on Monte Carlo’s narrow streets.

He added: “I am quite confident that we should be in reasonable shape for the race. We have high expectations because I have done well there in the past.

“But this is a grand prix where we can be lucky or we can be unlucky. We just have to go and get our job done – and I am looking forward to it very much.”